


An Equitable Arrangement

by Nightheart



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Body-Heir Contracts, Contractually obligated sexy-times, Dalish Headcannons, Elvhen Fertility, Elvhen Pantheon, Elvhen magic headcannons, Elvhenan, F/M, Mating Marks, My First Smut, Mythal's Blessing, Smut, Soulbonds?, The Headcannons of Arlathan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-01-21 11:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21298853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightheart/pseuds/Nightheart
Summary: Solas would have thought that guiding the Inquisition along toward his own goals from behind the scenes would occupy him entirely, but Mythal's Blessing activated and granted him a Bondmark. Cynical of the supposed "blessing" as he was one of the few who were aware of its true origins and purpose, he'd elected to ignore the minor inconvenience, thinking that there would be nothing in the short-lived magically stunted elflings of modern times that would he would find at all appealing.Then his Bondmate, Merrill, walked into Skyhold.Struck by her beauty and intrigued by her courage and intelligence, so unexpected from what he'd come to expect from a Dalish, Solas quickly becomes smitten by her, and determines that he would claim the Bondmate that Mythal's Blessing had selected for him. A woman of courage and audacity, however, will naturally refuse to bow meekly simply because he demands it of her, so Solas is brought to bargain with her as an equal.Everyone has their price, and he knows what hers is.
Relationships: Merrill/Solas
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	1. The Blessing of Mythal

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Fair Deal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4516386) by [Adarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adarian/pseuds/Adarian). 

> The very instant Solas showed up on screen in my first playthrough, I immediately shipped him with Merrill in my head (which turned out a lot more interesting when I got to the end of the game, let me tell you!). Despite the Dread Wolf, I still think they'd make an adorable pairing. An alliance of fussy and frolicsome scholars so staunch in their elfiness that they make scoffing elves flee the premises less they be pulled in to frolic in the woods and resurrect Arlathan. There is a marked paucity of fics featuring the pair, sadly, so I'm hoping that my meager contribution might set some imaginations alight, or at the very least inspire more smut.
> 
> There are my personal headcannons about the ancient elvhen but if anyone would like to borrow them, feel free. 
> 
> Also, fair warning, there's mature content in the latter half of the fic, so... cover the young 'un's eyes, I guess.

_:Of all of the inconvenient--!_:Solas irritated thought broke off in exasperation. _:As if I didn't have enough to deal with already.:_

To the Fade-blind, the air of Skyholds rotunda would have seemed still and peaceful, the noise of training soldiers muffled by thick walls and the only sound disturbing the silence the occassional caw of the Nightengale's ravens in thier cages above. To Solas however, the physical world was a consistant low-key cacophony as the effects of his... lapse in good judgement rippled though all of the layers of reality. At the moment, his stop gap measure of leading the Inquisition to the "ancient elven artifacts" and having the Inquisitor activate them, as well as seal the rifts in the area was just managing to stabilize the Veil enough that the worst of the effects had faded to the point where he could almost hear himself think.

Solas had at first thought that the soft, faint music echoing through his dreams and the worlds magical field was nothing more than a lingering disturbance from the sealing of the Breach.

_:It seems I was mistaken,:_ he thought in annoyance from the nearby doorway that led outside to the nearest little inner courtyard in Skyhold. _:What I had taken to be nothing more than ripples of magic were in fact Mythal's Blessing choosing **now** ,of all times, to manifest itself.:_

Solas rolled his eyes to himself. Even at the height of the Elvhen Empire when he had been Great General of Mythal's Forces and Lord of Wolfhold, he had not thought a great deal with what Mythal had chosen for her Great Work. All of the Evanuris had had one, a powerful working that they had dedicated the bulk of their Focus to doing. Yune had had his Workshop, Sylaise her Ever-Cauldron, Andruil her Wild Hunt. Mythal had chosen a... somewhat more oblique working.

The Elvhen in the days of the empire had been effectively immortal; long-lived to begin with, thier powerful magic extended thier livespans to the point that old age was exceedingly rare. In addition, the healing springs of elvhenan were so effective that anything could be cured or regnerated if it didn't immediately kill you. There was a price to be paid for this of course. It seemed that Nature's will would not be ignored, and chose to balance the elvhen longevity with matching infertility.

_:Probably a good thing,:_ Solas reflected idly as he squinted and looked sideways through the Veil to read the strange ripples on the other side of reality the absent way a diviner might read tea leaves for import. _:If we elvhen had reproduced as readily as modern elflings of this current era do, we should have covered the world in our offspring and quickly depleted all of our resources._:

In Arlathan, children had been rare indeed. A pairing might try for decades, even centuries, to conceive a child and never have anything to show for it besides dwindling hope. In contrast to modern times (where physical matings produced offspring in such numbers that elflings seemed to be fairly drowning in them) there had been a few things besides mere physical compatibility that had determined whether the fortunate couple would be blessed with a baby. The chiefest and most important factor, the factor upon which all other factors of elvhen fertility rested, it was believed, was "magical compatibility."

In Arlathan, saying that an elf had possessed magical ability had been like saying that an elf had had an ability to breathe. Every elf, to a greater or lesser degree, had been able to wield magic by their (roughly translated) "soulforce" interacting with the magical field of the world (as it had existed then, before the Veil). Every elvhen soulsong, the resonant magical hum that attuned to the harmonics of the Fade and determined what sort and what strength of magic that that elf would wield (as well as a variety of other things) was unique to each elf. Soulsongs varied wildly just as people's personalities could. However, two elves with similar magical harmonics could resonate with one another, and it was believed that this resonant attunement would enable their magics to mix and merge well enough to create a viable pregnancy.

_:Even a promising match between two elves with similar magical compatibility could go decades, even centuries without producing even one single child.:_

Magic could reliably move mountains on a whim, and reshape the world to suit a mage's desires, but it could not create elvhen life. That was left to the fickle whims of fate, and even those whose immense magical power had trod upon the territory of a god had been subject to Nature's limitations. Naturally, since children were so exceedingly rare, with no more than a handful being born every century despite efforts to increase the odds of producing that precious offspring, a great deal of value had been placed upon legacy in elvhenan. With the limitless power in the Empire of Arlathan making light of miracles, and magic being so reliably (if unevenly) distributed, value depended less on the wonders produced by magic and more on the solidity of ones legacy. An elf with no child, nor any prospect of getting one (be he ever so powerful) was still looked upon as pitiable.

As Queen of Summerhold, Mythal had been obsessed with her own infertility. She'd desired a child of her own body more than anything. She'd possessed near limitless power, but had been unable to attain the one thing she desired the most, her legacy, a child of her body. She had tried for thousands of years to conceive even a single precious child and been sorrowfully disappointed as the decades and centuries had rolled by and she had been left childless.

:_Honestly, I don't see why she kept her hopes up for all those centuries, everyone knows that the more powerful you are in magic, the harder it is to sire or conceive a child.:_

And that was even if she'd ever found an elf of any great magical compatibility with her, and she never had. Elgar'nan had been the closest thing she'd had to magical resonance, and Solas had thought that particular pairing had been a long shot, at best. It would have been difficult enough getting a child with one parent that was magically powerful, but two? Thier energies would surely cancel each other out.

_:But that didn't stop her from trying anyway,:_ Solas thought with a small internal shrug at the memory. _:And he took advantage of her for it.:_

He'd heard some of the Dalish stories about Mythal and Elgar'nan. The stories had made them out to be a peaceful, somewhat loving couple, a just king and queen of the pantheon when the reality had been anything but that. Solas cut his thoughts off with a frown before they could retread old and well-worn grievances with Elgar'nan and his treatment of his dear friend Mythal.

_:I suppose I should consider it amazing, instead, that her Great Work has managed to last for all of these thousands of years without her in attendance to maintain it,:_ Solas mused to himself as he felt the magic of the Worlds Field try to tighten around his own aura.

In Mythals province of the Empire, she had chosen to "hedge her bets" as Varric would have said. Her Great Work had been a massive spell woven into the World's Field of her Province, a mostly passive one. It attuned itself to the magical auras of every one of the elvhen who swore themselves to her banner and wore her valla'sliin, testing the harmonies of their soulsong and logging the information away. In the background the spell was always testing for magical compatibility between two elves that was strong enough to potentially bring about viable offspring. When a match was found, the Great Work activated, sending a spell though the World's Field that would write the name of the potential match on the flesh of the fortunate pair for them to seek one another out with.

Solas had often teased and chided her for her meddlesome tendencies in the empire. Mythal had been in the habit of inviting the lucky "bondmates" (for **somehow**, a rumor had gotten started about some kind of mystical bond between a pair, which Solas was sure was just more propaganda in her quest to increase the population of her Hold) to her Court and matchmaking them. She'd ignored him, of course, as she had often been wont to do, and Solas had left her to her hobby in peace and thought no more on it.

The first time that Solas had woke from the Death of Sleep and weakly managed to access the sad, trickling remains of the Worlds Field with his own soulforce, he had been surprised and no little bit irritated to have discovered that the spell was still active, and had targeted him!

_:I wear no-one's valla'sliin,:_ he grumbled to himself, offended. _:The very idea!:_

There was Mythal's Mark upon him, written in vallan characters for "softness" and "contemplation" phonetically creating the name-word "Meriele" and some nonsense clan-name he wasn't even sure was a name at all.

_:Which probably makes her lowborn,:_ he sniffed dismissively. _:Some common mud-doll from among these mayfly little elflings, unsuitable to my temperament and offensive to my aesthetic.:_

Even as he glanced again at the brightening golden characters written in magic over his heart, gold as the first rays of dawnlight and having grown steadily brighter as his bondmate had apparently made her way to him, Solas was resolved to send the little elfling on her way. He was much too busy to dedicate the time away from the myriad of projects and schemes he had right then that were neccessary for him to restore the world to it's proper course.

There was little doubt in his mind that she would be a crude, magically stunted creature. Nearly all of those he had encountered who called themselves elves had been so, and some of them had been particularly proud of it. It defied all sense to him.

_:It would be unpleasant enough to pair with such a pitiable wretch, but it's unthinkable for me to pair with one that does not suit my aesthetic. And no elf here has even **approached** it.:_

Solas' artistic temperament had gifted and cursed him with a very finicky, very exacting, highly developed aesthetic sense. Pride and his position in the empire had required that he would not lower his standards in even the slightest degree. Any mate of his would meet all of his criterion, or he would have none of her. This had led to his being considered... somewhat ascetic among his set. The evanuris had been lauded and lionized (if not outright deified!) throughout the empire, which had meant that, even without their vast amounts of wealth and power and their grand palaces and harems, they'd none of them lacked for choice when it came to selecting a bed-flower (or several) to while away the long nights in Arlathan with. Solas alone had been picky to the point of ridicule. Elgar'nan, the lusty lout, had even jokingly offered to loan him his library of erotic scrolls for education.

_:If there wasn't but one lady in all of Arlathan who could match me, I very much doubt I'll find my wonder-blossom here, in this wretched place, with this detestable lack of... **everything**!:_

Still, Mythal's Blessing had activated, and whatever else he might have said about her Great Work to her in jest, it had shown results, back in the day. Her province of Summerhold had boasted both the highest population of elves, and the highest birthrate, sometimes with as many as two children born in a single decade! In one miraculous incident, there had been an elven woman who had given birth to twins. _Twins_! It had been considered a thousand-year miracle at the time.

Solas would be lying to himself if he didn't admit, if only to himself, that he was just the tiniest bit curious to see for himself just exactly what sort of woman Mythal's Blessing had matched him with. He very carefully didn't allow himself to get his hopes up, of course. Solas knew better than to think that he was going to be matched with someone who matched all of his criterion and was compatible with him magically enough to produce a child for him. He'd long ago given up on any thought to a legacy of his own. He was simply too powerful, his gift burned too brightly, and his tastes were too exacting.

_:I suppose that there is no harm in casting my eye on the girl,:_ he thought in bitter amusement. _:If nothing else, I can tease Mythal mercilessly about how her Great Work has surely grown glitchy over the centuries.:_

He paced unhurriedly, a man who had all of the time in the world, through the Great Hall and out to the steps that descended to the ground of the main courtyard. His bare feet upon the grass thrummed softly in resonance to the ancient stones buried beneath thousands of years of detritus and erosion, over-top of which the many iterations of this secret place had been built. It's current incarnation, called Skyhold by the humans, was... not _terrible_. Solid, he would call it.

_:Not remotely so beautiful as Tarasyl'an te'las , but not terrible,:_ he thought to himself.

There beneath the raised portcullis, a small group of persons led by a broad-shouldered man with dark hair, a beard, and a smear of war-paint over the bridge of his nose, wandered into the Hold. He knew of the Champoin of Kirkwall through the work of Varric Tethras, who also traveled with the Inquisition, called the Tale of the Champion. It seemed the famed Champion had come with his own entourage, a voluptuous human woman of dark skin from the northern provinces with an exceptionally splendid hat, a tall muscular elven man with the most distressingly strange vallasliin that Solas could ever hope to encounter in ten thousand years, and in the back the swaddled form of the last of the group, a mage to judge by her staff.

_:Thus, unless Mythal's Mark is mistaken, makes my potential bondmate the unfortunate, scholarly bloodmage, the one who attempted to repair an eluvian with nothing but her own meager magics and a broken ariun'holm,_: Solas thought, eyes skimming the small crowd.

She hung at the very back, draped in a heavy, thick cloak to combat the deep, cutting cold of the Frostback Mountains, which had the effect of obscuring the mysterious Merrill (a mispronunciation of the characters that made her name anyway). Soon, however, the relative warmth unique to the environs of Skyhold (a holdover from the convenient elvhen magics that still lingered here which had once made the former holding here a veritable garden in winter) coaxed her to remove her hood so that he might look at her and satisfy his curiosity, then return to his work content that he needn't waste any more of his time on such a foolish trifle.

_:Even in the event she should be able to bear a single precious child of my line, there's no way I'd touch her if she's as homely and magically stunted as all the rest of the elves here are,:_ Solas thought righteously.

Even with his reluctance, the magic had a will of its own, and he was in close enough a proximity to his bondmate that there was a silent violin-like hum through the worlds magic that echoed in his mind and soul-magic as their two magical resonance frequencies met and merged, snapping in place to create a resonant harmony. His eyes unfocused out of the physical reality and pierced through to the Fade as he had not managed to do in some time now; and there he saw her soul-self, the reflection of her magic that lay on the other side of the Fade like a mirror image.

Her soulforce was bright, so bright. Her magic blazed with colors more brilliant than a sunrise at midsummer over the Starbright fields in Arlathan. Many of even the better and more powerful mages he'd seen in the modern world were enrethed in dull, muddy colors threaded through with bare sparks of what should be their brilliance. She, however blazed incandescently and with a beauty that made even _his_ breath catch in his throat, both because of its loveliness... and because of what it might represent to him.

_:No!:_ he brought himself up sharply before he could begin to entrtain even a slight hope. _:Best not to think of it. She's still very likely quite homely and unbearable to look upon, much less consider any of the rest of it.:_

Though if her soulforce was as pure and clear as the aura that blazed around her suggested, he might just consider putting a mask over her face for the task.

When his gaze flicked back to the mere surface physical reality that was all that the mud-doll mortals of the current world could perceive, Solas used his mere physical senses to look upon the elfling that Mythal's Great Working had matched him with. She'd just finished with unfolding herself from the layers of heavy woolen scarves enshrouding her face and Solas got his first good look at Merrill.

Nut-brown hair, thick and lovely. Eyes the shade of summer leaves when the sun shone through them. Form slender and pale as a birch tree. Perfectly shaped, delicate elven features of such conformation and proportion that the great artists of old would surely have wept with joy to be presented such a specimen of elven beauty. She was like a perfect white flower at the height of its bloom, pale in the light of the morning and glistening with dew.

_"Thenera an ma_  
_vhenan suledin in_  
_enansal nadas."_

Poetry dedicated to her sprang, unbidden, into his mind. That first glance was enough to captivate him.

_:Perhaps I was a bit hasty at first...:_ he reconsidered.

Merrill, for her part gave him a long, mistrustful look as they were introduced.

"Daisy," the durgen'len who had lost his connection with the stone, but was nonetheless a likable fellow said. "This is our resident Fade expert, Solas. He likes all that old elven stuff too, so you should get along like a house on fire."

She knew that he was the Dread Wolf, she could sense it, but the legends she knew of him were not the same ones that had been sung to praise him in Arlathan. In this modern world he was the Dalish equivalent of a bogey-monster, a shadowy tale used to frighten young Dalish children into behaving for thier Keepers.

"It is a pleasure to meet another avid scholar of history," he said in smooth, polite tones. "Perhaps you would accompany me to my study beneath the main library, here in the rotunda."

Merrill still said nothing, watching him with wary eyes.

"Of your courtesy," he pressed, his tone conveying his expectation of her.

Cautiously, she obeyed and followed him to the small research space he had created for himself in his persona as a humble apostate and scholar of history, interested only in the Fade and the occasional artifact.

He watched her examine the different panels he had painted on the walls of the rotunda, detailing the rise and deeds of the Inquisition. He found it useful to keep an artistic record. Books could be burned and stories re-written, but sometimes, sometimes, art lived forever.

"You know me," he said softly in a conversational tone that would not carry, even in the strange acoustics of the room they were surrounded with.

The ravens could be annoying, and he was partly convinced that the reason Leliana had chosen to make the impromptu rookery her personal nest was that she could hear nearly every conversation in Skyhold from there.

"All those who are trained as Dalish Keepers are taught to recognize the Dread Wolf, no matter what form he walks in," she replied softly. "What is it you're doing here? Isn't it enough you've destroyed the world of our people, have you come to finish what you've started?"

Her words pierced him directly, like well-aimed arrows and he took a moment to collect himself before he answered.

"The destruction of my world was... the regrettable conclusion to a series of unforeseen circumstances beyond even my control," he said honestly. "I am here to correct it and to restore the elvhen people to their proper place."

"And what place is that?" she asked, not bothering to hide her suspicion.

Solas considered his answer a moment and decided that he might try to entice her well-known curiosity and love of learning to soften her toward him.

"Imagine a world where the boundary between matter and magic, between dream and form, is as thin as what you call Senutheneran. Thinner. A world where you are not set apart from the so-called "normal folk" for your supposed rare magical gift, but instead all have magic and are prized for the uniqueness of its expression," he said.

She was still wary of him, but the picture he painted for her was enough to intrigue her. She cocked and ear, listening.

"Magic was part of our every breath once, long ago," he added, unable to hold back a note of wistfulness at the loss. "It was in the words we spoke and the very foundations of the empire were built upon it. Grand palaces filled with wonders, castles of crystal that had fountains that sang, a journey of thousands of miles crossed in a few steps. Miracles like you cannot even imagine were commonplace."

"It sounds like a children's wonder-tale," she muttered a bit pettishly.

He didn't miss the longing in her eyes though. She wanted it to be true. Wanted it desperately.

"I do not lie to you, Merrill," he replied.

To prove his claim, he unfastened the high collar of his tunic and pulled it aside to reveal Mythal's Mark upon his chest, glowing firey-gold upon his skin, dimming and brightening in time to his heartbeat. With a subtle nudge of his magic, he activated the seekers-thread and in the air between them appeared an ephemeral red string, shimmering like sunlight caught upon spidersilk. Once the tie between them had activated, their magics pinged one another back and forth, seeking the other out.

"You bear my name upon you, as I bear yours upon me," he said. "In all of the world and all of the centuries, there has not ever been a candidate that has matched me under my dear, meddling old friends power."

"I'm flattered, I suppose?" she said in her thick, lilting accent.

It was clear to him that she was anything but flattered by the distinction, and would clearly much rather have had the mark fall upon another. His pride pricked, Solas decided to give her a little demonstration of what being marked with high magical resonance with him could mean for her.

He could feel her magic resonating with his, feel the tension of pleasure and potential strong between them, instinctively there was a part of her that reached back to him. Softly, gently, he stroked a fine frisson of his magic against hers and watched as her breath caught and her eyes filled with wonder.

It sank deep down in the root of his center of pleasure, pooling and heating there. Magi rose up within her and reached back to his, humming enticingly, as a delightful flicker of fire and spice and sensual pleasure resonated between them as a mere taste of the possibility that lay between them. She moved away from him like a skittish colt and Solas had to brace against both desire and instinct not to chase after her. The whisper-soft hum of her magic pulled at his own as a magnet attracted iron. A shiver of desire and longing tremor-ed through him, amplified by his longing.

"You feel it too," he murmured down at her.

He could see it, sense it. Her face was flushed and her breaths came in short, needy gasps.

"I won't feel anything for the Dread Wolf," she whispered defiantly.

**_:Oh?:_** he was brought up a bit short, his pride now more deeply injured.

Amused, he unleashed a little more of his own great magical aura, letting it wash over her in an insistent gentle wave, an ephemeral caress that tingled with electricity, tickling down into her sensitive places.

"Your feelings betray you, my beauty," he murmured to her, subtly increasing the intensity of his magic traveling along her body.

With a deft twist that he hadn't practiced in centuries, he entangled his magic with hers, vibrating them together like a bow across an irhui string and sending ripples of sensation into her core. Shier magics attuned to one another even further, causing the the sensations to echo back into him through their fledgling connection.

_:Leaf and Star!:_ Solas exclaimed to himself in shocked wonderment. _:Mythal's Blessing runs true, we're more compatible than anything I've ever known before.:_

He felt her magic, her body, her pleasure almost like it was his own. He could feel her hunger, sense how she could merge her magic with his as their pleasures grew together. Even in Arlathan, such a close natural confluence of spiritual energy was rarer than a thousand year eclipse, and heralded blessings that mages had fought wars to possess.

He wanted her.

"This is but a taste of what we could be," he continued persuasively. "I'll not have you unwilling, but think of what I offer. Pleasure without end, without limit. Merely give yourself to me and I shall fulfil desires you never knew yourself capable of wanting."

Her gaze became unfocused and he watched on in amusement as her knees very discernibly went weak. He heard her suppress a near-inaudible high-pitched whimper of need. She just barely managed to compose herself enough to look back at him defiantly

"Promises or threats will not sway me, Fen'Harel. I am not in the habit of yielding to anyone."

He leaned over and brought a finger gently under her chin, tilting her face up to see him as he leaned down and murmured directly into her ear

"We shall see, my beauty."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone knows the artists who created these fanarts I picked out from my pinterest board, I would love to give them credit, so please by all means shoot me a notice in the comments or drop me a message so I can link and give a shout-out.


	2. Signed, Sealed and Delivered

He let her run about the hold, avoiding him, for another day or so while he arranged his own matters to his satisfaction. If there was a chance, no matter how small, that she could bear even one single, precious child by him, then that chance was to be seized by any and all means. He saw now that his mental dismissal of her before he'd even seen her was in error, and let it not be said he would refuse to correct himself when he was wrong. Solas didn't believe in Fate, not as the elves who'd once spouted wondertales of Mythal's Blessing did, but he knew an opportunity when he saw one.

_:As in saisho, there are no inherently weaker or stronger pieces, only opportunities to be passed by or seized_,: he thought.

A subtle word or two here and there in the right ears, and "dear Varric" was oh-so-regrettably called away to travel with the Inquisitor, coincidentally leaving his Dalish delight quite without chaperone in Skyhold. Solas timed his moment well, and caught her out alone on a rampart with nary a guard within sight or earshot. She was enjoying the view of the Frostbacks, though she shivered in the cold. Whoever had brought her to Skyhold had not thought to prepare her for the frigid temperatures on the ramparts. Solas brought her a warm mantle of wolfs fur, materialized from within his Inner Palace in the Fade and offered it to her when he greeted her at her perch.

"I'm warm enough," she said, attempting to refuse the gift. "I don't need it."

She was proud. He could relate, but he saw her shivering. 

"I admire your will, but not your foolishness," he replied. "I will give you a choice however. You may accept my cloak and wrap it about you, or I shall use other means to warm your body."

"Other means?" she asked blankly, looking back at him, innocent of his meaning.

In reply, he loosened his lowest san'sii'an, the inner gateways that connected his body and spirit with the magic of the Fade, and allowed his aura to flood with more of his power which pressed out into his aura. He then sent this subtle manifestation of his power over to Merrill to wrap around her like a blanket. He felt their individual magical energies push against one another, then attune and slowly merge. The individual notes of their magical signatures slowly melded into a song, a pleasant, pleasurable thrum with a melody of delicious lust underpinning the song. He watched, satisfied, as a flood of pure feeling washed through her. Solas pressed the currents of his magic to tickle into intimate places, coaxing out delightful sensations to waken her body. He sensed her blood begin to heat heat as warmth began to pool between her legs. Her cheeks, already pink from the cold wind, warmed further. A soft, ghostly caress of his magic over the sensitive peaks of her breasts caused her to let out a hot, gasping pant. 

"No more," she whispered desperately.

She reached out and took the fur wrap from him, obediently pulling it about her shoulders. He pulled his magic back respectfully, fulfilling her request now that she'd decided to be reasonable.

"Was there something you wanted, or did you just come out here to sexually harass me?" she demanded of him.

Solas couldn't help the smile of amusement at her display of spirit. Her delicate appearance hid a fiercer nature, and this pleased him. Solas did not favor a milksop. Merrill was proud and stubborn as well as heart-stoppingly beautiful (at least to him, but he had a highly developed sense of aesthetic). Mythal's Blessing would not have chosen someone who was unworthy of him. He saw that now.

"I come to you with an offering," he said, advancing into her personal space just to have another taste of her sweet sensual aura.

Taste and scent, touch and sound; sensations, heady as honey-wine, entered through his own magical aura. He could feel her arousal, the soft ache of desire that thrummed through her body and her magic. Equally, he could sense the firmness of her resolution to deny herself if it meant denying him.

"I don't want it, whatever it is," she said firmly, placing her hands flat on his chest and pressing gently to move him away from her.

It took an effort of will to move back away from her intoxicating presence. In Arlathan, he had always prided himself on his solitary and intellectual nature, watching with a slightly disdainful indifference as he brethren had run about mating with wild abandon and squabbling over concubines. He was no untouched virgin, of course, (certainly not after centuries on war-march!) but even his closest allies had often teased him about his slightly ascetic tendencies. A younger Dread Wolf had never seen any cause to loose his head over fleeting lust. Now, he was beginning to understand just what all the fuss had been about. If he had met Merrill in the Empire he would have gladly called together his Great Host and marched to claim Merrill as his war-prize, or if she'd hailed from a Province friendly to his own, perhaps he would have competed in a Flower War (an event in Arlathan not entirely dissimilar from the Orlesian Grand Melee) naming her his Honored Lady in the hopes of catching her eye and claiming her affections. As it stood, Solas would be required to use his wit to win her, rather than his martial prowess. After a time to study the account of her that Varric had written, and having overheard the conversations she'd carried on with others in Skyhold, he felt he had alighted upon her weakness. The weakness that he would use to bring her to him, and convince her to bring his child into the world. 

"You haven't even heard my offer," he replied softly.

"The legends my people tell of you warn against even hearing you out," she said frankly, frowning at him in wariness.

Solas suppressed a flash of annoyance at the mention of her people's tales of him. He knew perfectly well what stuff and nonsense the tales of her people told of the terrible Dread Wolf. 

"And since when are you one to do obediently as you have been told?" he countered. "You are made of sterner stuff than your foolish kin, cowering in the dark and jumping at shadows without the least understanding of the substance they are cast from. You are not afraid to seek out the source and ascertain the truths of the shadows for yourself."

"It is a Keeper's duty to remember, even the dangerous things, but dangerous things are still dangerous, and there has never been smoke without a fire," she replied stubbornly. "Every time I make a decision for myself is seems as though others pay the price, and I'll not put my friends in such danger."

"I have no interest in them," he countered swiftly. "Only in you."

Merrill still looked doubtful so Solas added

"As for smoke and fires, I would remind you of your own less than savory reputation among your people, Merrill of the Dalish."

Merrill winced and shrank in on herself a little bit and Solas felt a small pang of remorse for the dig so he swiftly softened his tone as he said

"We cannot always help what is said of us. It is possible, tragically possible, to begin an endeavor with only the best of intentions and still have everything go catastrophically awry. You know this better than anyone, Merrill. Would you not extend to me the compassion of an audience without judgement, as one who has suffered slander upon noble intentions? I would not make my suit of you with empty hands. Though I am much humbled from what I once was, I do have offerings enough to make a fine suit to a woman as worthy as you are."

His appeal did soften her by the tiniest measure. Enough to hear him out.

"At first I had thought to offer you merely a boon to be called in at any time of your choosing, but I quickly came to understand that so common a gift is unworthy of one such as you," he said. "In Arlathan, I might have courted you with flowers, jewels and fine clothing, exotic gifts and war-mounts, even with entire holdings and titles of your own had I desired you enough."

"I'm not-" she protested.

"Not interested in worldly trifles, yes," he said, nodding in understanding. "You Merrill. You value what is truly worth valuing, you cherish the treasures of the mind."

She still regarded him with wariness, but didn't move to leave. He took her arm gently in his own and walked with her down the rampart through the darkened corridors of Skyhold, down into the hidden vault beneath, and unsealed a door hidden by an illusion-barrier. The foundations of the modern castle of Skyhold gave way to something much, much older. Ancient in fact. With a thought he summoned Veilfire, the braziers that lined the ancient elven stone steps lit with their eerie green glow. The walls were decorated with tile mosaics that were very clearly and obviously Elven, from before the sundering. Solas gestured that she should follow him down into the mysterious depths beyond the threshold. Merrill hesitated a moment at the landing but, seeing as she'd come that far, her curiosity compelled her forward, as he had known it would.

"I read Varric's tragic account of you," he said, leading her through the elven-arched corridors. 

"Tragic? What part is tragic?" she asked absently, the bulk of her attention captured by the ancient elven structure hidden underneath the current Skyhold.

"The tragedy of how you pursued true knowledge and understanding, following where your search led you, no matter the danger to you, no matter how painful its truth," Solas said in approving tones. "The only thing you abhor is falsity. You would not flinch from a painful truth simply because it is hard to stomach."

Merrill looked back at him blankly, clearly unable to imagine living any other way. He chuckled softly and said

"You would be surprised, My Beauty, at the number of people who, when confronted with a harsh and uncomfortable truth, will turn from it and return to their comforting fantasy, no matter how erroneous it is." 

"But why?" she asked in confusion. "It doesn't do any good to go on believing a lie once you know it's a lie."

"It's safe," he replied. "And it makes them feel safe to believe in it. Not you. You are so very brave and no-one seems to see it. You won't be comforted by a safe and familiar lie, nor coddled by accepting the ways that are known when you know you can pursue what is unknown."

"It is my duty," she said. "A Keeper's job is to remember, and to restore what she can."

"You choose to follow the harder path of your duty where many Keepers, and Firsts are content merely to go on repeating the stories they know and accept," he corrected her. "You investigate them to determine your own truth. This is more admirable, especially now, than you give yourself credit for. It is for this reason that I offer you a gift that has worth that cannot be measured."

He led her to an ancient set of elaborately decorated and magically warded double doors formed in the fashion of the High Empire, when Arathan had been at the zenith of its power and glory. He opened the doors revealing a disappointingly smallish chamber, to judge by her reaction to it. However she did not remain disappointed for very long for in the back of the chamber was the pointed arch of a proper Arlathan eluvian. The watery-silver surface of the eluvian rippled slightly in the tomb-like stillness of the Alrlathani equivalent of a front step.

"You're giving me an eluvian!" she exclaimed, misunderstanding his gift.

"No, not quite," he said. "Though I am aware of your fascination with the waygates that I and my brethren have built, the thing that I offer you lies beyond it. Look closely into its depths."

Merrill did as he bid and gasped in wonder and delight as she caught sight of his bait. Through the slight rippling distortions of the fold in space-time could be seen the sad, chaotic remains of the broken Great Library of Arlathan. It was now reduced to an alien landscape of inside-out and upside- down rooms floating in no particular order. The Great Library had shattered. In the cataclysm caused by his manifesting the Veil, the formerly neatly-planned pocket-dimensions within the Vir Dirthara had spontaneously manifested themselves when the magic split. What had once been separate wings within the general structure of the library now floated in their own erratic orbits around the central hub, the contents within now obeying their own peculiar gravities.

Solas was gratified to see that he had read her correctly. At the sight of the books, her eyes widened in awe and she made a wordless noise of wonder and delight. For a moment she was transcendent with beauty as her whole heart must had reached out eagerly for the knowledge long thought lost to her and her people. 

Row upon row, shelf upon shelf, room after room, more books than Merrill could hope to read in twenty of her own quickling lifetimes hovered just beyond her reach. She started to move forward eagerly, but Solas clasped a restraining hand about her waist, pulling her in beside him.

"I can understand your eagerness to be about the work that brings you joy, my scholarly beauty," he said. "But there is one detail your people have retained of me that is accurate." 

"Only one?" she asked a bit archly.

Solas smiled thinly.

"I offer nothing without a price," he informed her firmly. "To be entirely fair, that was the way of the world in Arlathan, you know. From the highest king to the lowest serf in elvhenan, it was a universal tenet; if one would attain, then something of equal value must be surrendered."

"I have nothing that could compare to this," she protested in dismay.

"As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too is value measured by the person in want of a thing," he countered in a reassuring tone. "You are unaware of it, but you have something to offer that is of immeasurable value to me. A gift of such precious rarity, that, if I had lived another ten thousand years I might never see its like again."

Merill's brow furrowed in obvious puzzlement. He understood her confusion, for he was being deliberately obtuse. 

"I ah, I suppose I should what is the phrase Master Tethras is so fond of? Ah, yes. I suppose I should level with you," he said. "The stories that your people tell of the elves of Arlathan being so long lived as to be effectively immortal are true. The idea that it was the human's entering our cities and infecting us somehow with mortality is not accurate. The cause of the People's grievous loss was something else entirely, though due to the concurrence of the events it is not difficult to see why that was the conclusion they reached." 

Solas shook his head. He'd not brought her there to lecture her in the errors of her people's so-called histories.

"I digress," he dismissed then proceeded to attempt to explain to Merrill why Mythal's Blessing was so very important. "The elvhen in Aralthan were incredibly long lived, counting the decades and centuries the way your people now count weeks and years. Sickness and disease were quickly banished, and anything short of a directly mortal wound could be healed by our effective healing magics. There was a price to be paid for this, however."

"Was it blood magic?' she asked curiously.

"Not as you would understand it. No," he said. "Our people were magically powerful, especially by today's standards, but we were not numerous. We were effectively immortal, but we were not easily able to reproduce. It is that last that was of great concern to us."

"You couldn't have babies?" she asked, sounding like she pitied him. "But if you had no da'len, then how would you pass on your history and your teachings?"

"Procreation was difficult," he allowed. "It was a long-held belief that the strength of ones magic, and something we call magical compatibility, were the greatest determining factors in which pairing would be blessed with new life. Mythal, er, made something of a study of it, over the centuries. She desired children of her own, but sadly, the strength of her magic was too great. it was a commonly held believe that the stronger ones magic was, the more difficult it would be to have or sire children. The most magically powerful of us, my bretheren in what you call the pantheon, could not procreate at all, despite centuries of efforts with numerous partners."

Solas decided not to mention that the elvhenan definition of "numerous" was likely numbered in the hundreds. Trying to have a child had been serious business in Arlathan. None of the evanuris had ever showed even the slightest sign of being able to have children. Not even Mythal and Elgar'nan, and they had shared a magical resonance. Despite regular searches and Mythal's grand plan for a magical resonance matching system to tag and track compatible magical signatures, the upper echelons of the elvhen magical community had been considered barren. The evanuris had been considered by all, by right of their powerful magic, to be effectively sterile. Solas had long ago resigned himself to the fact that he would sire no legacy. Never would he know the joys of raising a child of his own flesh and magic, tutoring them in the ways of war and art and magic. Never would he hold that tiny precious life in his own arms, never know the joys of fadewalking beside his child on thier first steps into the deeper world, nor to help lead them to wisdom. Never would he pass on his legacy of blood and magic. He had accepted it long ago, considering it the price he paid to wield his vast power.

And here, placed before him in his lowest hour, was the possibility of a long-denied, _painful_ wish he had buried deep within him. Something he had wanted with an ache that his pride had not allowed him to acknowldge. Fatherhood. It had been seen as an impossible dream for him. His power had been so great that it had trod upon the demesne of a God. Because of this, his chances to sire even a single child had been infinitesimal at best. Until now.

Solas carefully explained this to her, as well as the significance and rarity of magical compatibility. The more magically compatible, or in other words, the more greatly attuned the harmonics of the soulsong were, the higher the chances they would have of being able to make a child together.

"In all of the many centuries of my life," he said at last. "I have not ever encountered another elf who shares my magical compatibility to such a great degree as you do, Merrill of the Dalish. Even Mythal's Great Working has declared that our resonance is high enough that your body could produce a child of my seed. With me. For me," he said, unable to prevent his hand from seeking to gently caress her belly, thinking of the womb contained within and the chances that it could give to him _his_ treasure beyond counting. "I had not ever thought to have even the smallest chance at such a precious gift."

He turned his head to look back at the eluvian.

"My proposition is simple, Merrill."

He called one of the books over to him, opening it up and holding it before her to offer her a tantalizing glimpse of what lay within. It would be wise of him to set the hook firmly, after all.

"I will give to you your chance at the treasure you cherish the most in all of existence and you in turn..." he said, resting his hand upon the flat of her stomach. "Will offer mine to me."

Merrill looked back at him, clearly taken aback by his proposal.

"So," she said at last. "To be clear... Sex for books?"

"If you wish to put it so crudely," he said a bit stiffly, his pride felt injured that she would reduce it to something so torrid and _common_. 

_:After all, she has grown up in a world where a woman having baby after baby after baby by any number of men, and often by accident, was commonplace_,: Solas consoled his wounded pride.:

In fact, her people were _drowning_ in children to the point that they couldn't always feed them all, and women were reduced to brewing potions to _limit_ their fecundity lest they drive themselves to ruin by birthing more children than they could provide for! Merrill could hardly be expected to conceive of a world where women and men both prayed, often with little hope, that this would be the decade when at last they would be chosen by the fickle whims of fate to receive a child of their bloodline. The the age of Arlathan, there had been elaborate rituals and courtships that were designed to maximize the slim chances of conceiving viable offspring. The sound of a baby's cry had been more rare and more prized than all of the greatest treasures of kings and magic. She could not understand what it was like to live without hope for a legacy, and how close it felt to a miracle that he had this chance now. This was not a chance he intended to squander.

"And to be clear," he added properly. "I offer you the chance to study, to learn, to grow your knowledge as you have only _dreamed_ of, and in exchange I ask that you will consent to work with me in granting my wish for viable offspring. A babe of my own issue."

"I'm _not_..." she hesitated, clearly uncertain of his aims. "I'm not sure this would be wise of me..."

Her people had preached nothing of the Dread Wolf save that he was duplicitous. Despite this, Merrill unwilling to relinquish a chance at the thing she treasured most. 

_:Yes, yes, my beauty look longingly on what I offer. Long for it and come to me,_: he thought impatiently, silently _willing_ her to take his bait.

He allowed her to continue to look upon the distant library with its secrets and wonders yet locked away from her eyes. He waited. He wish he could say he waited patiently, but truthfully, having a prize of such singularity just at his fingertips was maddening. 

If he were as ruthless as, say, Elgar'nan, he would not have bothered to bargain with Merrill at all for her cooperation, he would have simply enspelled her to bend her to his will. That cad of a former comrade had favored a particularly nasty a potion for those occasions when a lover he'd had his eye on grew recalcitrant. It had been called the Tears of Madness. It had sparked an uncontrollable, unquenchable lust of such power and potency that any attempt to deny it drove the victim to tears of need. In time the lust became so powerful and so all-consuming that its denial could drive one to madness, a berserk frenzy of untamable desire. Solas had not approved of its use, as he had always valued consent, but Elgar'nan had ignored him, only teasing Solas for his scruples. If Solas _were_ as ruthless as the Dalish legends had painted him, he would have simply spirited Merrill away to a hidden chamber somewhere and kept her fed on that potion until she'd conceived his child. But, he was not, so he would bargain with her to attain her cooperation. 

"Why me?" she asked in confusion. "If you know about the stories the Dalish have of you, you'd know I'm not likely to think much of you, and there's plenty of elves in the cities who don't know Fen'Harel from a hole in the ground."

"It _must_ be you," he replied. "You are the one who Mythal's Great Work has found for me, the only one with a strong magical compatibility with me. That magical compatibility requirement is nothing to be taken lightly to my kind. It is already akin to a miracle that we have this close a spiritual resonance. If I am to have any chance at all to sire the child I so wish for, it _must_ be with you."

He pulled another book over from one of the shelves with his magic, bringing it across the eluvian and opening it so she could look at it. It contained pictures and diagrams of the inner spell workings that formed the eluvian, something she would recognize by her work with one but would not have ever seen with her eyes before before.

"See this, what I offer?" he murmured, looking down over her shoulder. "All of the ancient knowledge that has been lost would be restored to you, Merrill. Just as you had always dreamed of."

"And... you won't hurt anyone?" she asked uncertainly. "You won't hurt my Clan or my friends, or try to pull any trick? This.. arrangement will only be between you and me?"

Solas would need to be careful here. It was true that he would not _deliberately_ wish to harm her kin or friends, but his plans for the future would likely cause them to come to harm eventually. He was however, now cautiously optimistic. She had not said no, and it sounded very much like she was considering his offer favorably. Perhaps.... 

"You will have my word," he said with careful deliberation, tamping down on his rising impatience. "That I will have no designs to act directly against your kin. I shall not harm them, Merrill."

"Or by deliberate inaction allow them to come to harm?" she immediately qualified. 

Some-one had taught her to bargain carefully, either Varric Tethras or that Keeper of hers perhaps. Then again, she'd been raised by the Dalish to suspect him of trickery so it was no surprise she was seeking out loopholes.

"Not by word or by deed, by action or inaction shall I seek to harm you, your Clan or your chosen circle of friends," he relented.

Perhaps he could simply wait her out. Merrill, her friends and her kin were short-lived quicklings. A few short decades and she would be gone and he would be released from his vow to her.

"And I'll get to learn how to read these books?" she added on. "You will teach me elven vallan so that I can read them?"

Just how cruel did she think he was? Knowing that the Dalish had lost the knowledge of how to read the thousands upon thousands of vallan characters that the elves used, it was clear she thought that she would make the deal with him for access to the library only to discover that she could read none of the books, but would still be bound by her word to him to give him his babe.

"I shall teach you to read every character you wish to learn," he promised her impatiently.

He was eager, and she was so _close_ to saying yes. Solas had to carefully restrain himself from rashly promising her _anything_ that would tip the scales of her decision to his favor. He yearned desperately for the gift that only she could give to him.

"Will you let me be in my child's life, or will this be a body-heir contract?" Merrill asked next.

Solas swallowed a huff of impatience and was also surprised to discover that this was something the Dalish had retained, culturally, from Arlathan. Due to the scarcity of children and the difficulty with conception, contracts to secure an heir of one's bloodline with a magically compatible temporary mating had not been uncommon. Body-heir contracts had been a serious business. Solas paused to consider the option for a long moment.

_:Her people are fecund,:_ he considered. _:It is possible, through a fluke of their make-up, that I might manage to sire even **more** than one child on her.:_

If one child was miraculous for him, two would be indescribable. A convergence of stars!

"We shall worry about the first babe, before we make negotiations beyond that," he said cautiously.

"If it's to be a proper body-heir contract," Merrill said. "We'll need to negotiate all of the details and have it all in writing, signed and sealed. Properly."

"Properly?" he raised an eyebrow.

"Properly," she nodded firmly.

It occurred to him that, despite the cultural similarities that the Dalish had retained about body-heir contracts, he very much doubted that they had retained the particular ritual practiced in High Arlathan for the sealings of such arrangements. When negotiations for a body-heir contract had been satisfactorily concluded, the participants had done considerably more than merely signed upon the dotted line. A serious contract was always sealed by sex; both as a gesture of good faith and in the belief that a mingling of fluids and magical energies was significantly more reliable than a mere handshake. If she was going to insist upon a proper contract, he was certainly _more_ than willing to oblige her.

"Very well, if you will come with me, I believe that I can locate the wing where legal contracts were conducted," he said, carefully hiding his eagerness lest she should become wary by it. "In order to ensure that all of the forms have been observed and that everything in on the level, I'm sure you would see no fault with sealing the contract in the manner of court during the empire of Arlathan. I trust this will be satisfactory."

Merrill, proud creature that she was, clearly did not know what he spoke of, but was equally unwilling to betray her ignorance as she no doubt prided herself on her people's preservation of the lore of the ancient elvhen. 

"That will be fine," she said, trying and failing to hide her uncertainty, and her clear wonderment over what exactly sealing a contract had entailed in Arlathan.

Solas carefully hid his inner delight at her acquiescence to conducting the legal affair in the style of Arlathan as he led her across the threshold of the eluvian and into the sad chaos of the sundered library. He led by the hand, firmly pulling her along behind him though it was clear to him that she wanted to do nothing but look all about her and try to read the books. He could sympathize with her scholastic appetite, but he wanted his contract firmly in place before her released her. It would not do to give her any time for second-thoughts.

:There will be plenty of time for her to read during the twenty-seven months of gestation she will have after she carries my child within her,: he thought in smug anticipation.

The bait had been taken and she had well and truly swallowed the hook, all that was left was to bring her to his hand.

In his usual methodical manner, Solas had readied the contract room ahead of time in anticipation of her favorable answer. He had wanted no delay when he got her to agree to his request. The fore-most antechamber was already set up with sheaves of blank gold-leaf paper, with a golden and bejeweled calligraphers box containing calligraphy brushes, inkstones and pre-mixed pots of the magical ink that was used for such binding agreements in Arlathan. And empty scroll case, also gold and inlaid with jewels (as the contract was very important to Solas and he would not give it anything less than its full due) waited nearby to hold the contract when it was signed. Two cushions were placed before a low table for comfort during the (historically, usually very long) negotiations. A small stove heated with emberstones held a pot for boiling water to make tea with; he detested the stuff, but he knew that Merrill was fond of it and so he would accommodate her. The walls of the ritual sealing chamber were covered in mosaics, many of them depicting the... act of sealing the contract as it had been practiced in Arlathan. Many of the depictions were quite scandalous by modern standards.

"Oh look!" Merrill chirped, taking in some of the mosaics that depicted ritual sealing activities. "They all played leapfrog in Arlathan, too!"

It was on the tip of his tongue to correct her misapprehension about what the mosaic was actually depicting, (as it was certainly _not_ the children's game) but he remained silent. He wanted this contract to go through first. Who knew, perhaps she could be persuaded to try the Arlathan version of leapfrog soon.

"Oh and what a lovely dance-party they're all having," Merrill added, sighting another depiction of a different contract, this one with several participants. "It must have been so much fun in Arlathan!"

"It had its moments," he said dryly as he gathered up the accoutrements for drawing up a proper contract. 

He wanted the contract good and binding, for if she got away he had a feeling he was going to be chasing her all the way to the Beyond to get the child he wanted from her. He didn't want her claiming that he'd played her false either. No, he wanted everything legal and binding for the birth of his babe.

With a wave of his hand the mirrored top of the table lit softly and he sat on the cushion on one side of the negotiation table and gestured that Merrill should take her seat on the other side. To his surprise, she sat properly, with her legs tucked under her as had been practiced in Arlathan, without the least sign of awkwardness or discomfort. it seemed that the Dalish had managed to retain a few things of true Elvhen culture after all!

"Shall we begin, then?" he said, taking up his calligraphers brush and preparing to dip it into the ink.

"Me nuvenin," Merrill said with a nod as she poured hot water over her tea leaves and waited for them to steep.

Solas wrote out the details of the contract in both elvhen vallan clerkish-script _and_ in the common tongue that was all Merrill would know to read. Just to make certain that the terms were agreeable, he carefully spoke them out loud so that she would understand what they said. On occasion she quibbled a bit over the wording, showing that she was educated and conversant with the law (such as it existed among her people). What little things she asked for, minor trifles mostly, he willingly gave, for he wanted her to perceive him as generous. It was more likely to make her willing and amenable to his own requests.

"I suppose that's everything then?" Merrill asked as they neared the end of the page.

"I have a caveat or two of my own to add," he qualified, holding up a finger to forestall her writing her signature. 

"Oh?" she asked warily.

"You shall have all I have promised to you," he promised her, pointing out each clause as he named them so that she could see them for herself. "That being access to the Great Library, the learning of vallan, my personal oath of non-agression as per the stipulations for your kin and social circle... for all of this I stipulate that until the child of my issue rests in my arms I shall want that you and your womb be readily available to me to implant my seed."

"I... er, what?" she asked.

There was no mistaking the look on her face. By the standards of her culture, Solas had said something entirely too forthright. In Arlathan, little had been done in haste, and even less had been done directly. Only cruse and boorish people wielded the elegant tongue of the Elvhen like a club, any elvhen worth knowing knew how to speak well and communicate with discretion and beauty. Contracts, however had been an exception. No-one wanted to risk there being room to wriggle out of an agreement by an elegant turn of phrase, so when negotiating contracts, the language used during the negotiations was painfully direct and excruciatingly blunt so that there was no mistaking the precise meaning of what was being said. To parlay in the usual fashion of elvhen indirectness, was considered a gesture of bad faith.

"It has been many centuries," he admitted, reluctantly and at no little cost to his pride. "And I am eager for this child." 

A hint of apprehension entered her expression as it began to sink in that he would not be contented with a single attempt to get a child on her. This would not be just one event where she could "close her eyes and think of Arlathan," but that he would require many joinings with her to ensure the conception of the babe he desired. Solas hastened to reassure her, lest she should have second thoughts.

"I promise that in our every joining, my touch upon you shall bring you only the greatest pleasure, my beauty," he said persuasively. "But I will wish to avail myself of every opportunity to sow your womb. In order to facilitate this, I would have you lie with me frequently."

"But I want _reading_ time! How am I to learn if you're always insisting on frolicking with me?" she protested immediately.

"The gestation of elvhen lasts for twenty-seven moon-cycles," he informed her. "Though I have learned that gestation cycle of modern elflings is considerably shorter. You may read as much as you like once your body carries my fruit within."

She looked at him slightly pouting. It was clear that she wanted to devote her time to her studies and not to "frolicking with the Dread Wolf" as she put it. Solas quickly offered something to entice her back to his way of thinking. 

"So that you need not always travel back and forth between that world and this, I will open my own private suite here in the Vir Dirthara. You may study here in peace and comfort, without needing to worry over making any excuses to your friends for your long disappearances."

In actual fact this was as much to his benefit as it was to hers, he would have a place to keep her well both while he impregnated her and while she gestated his child within her. Also, he did not wish the potential fetus possibly being damaged by the stunted magical climate of the current physical world before he'd had a chance to fix things. Better that she be impregnated and remain within the confines of the Vir Dirthara to bear his child. 

"Well, I suppose that makes sense enough, but after you put a child in me, I want all-access to this library, even when I've pushed it out," she stipulated. "After all, a bairn is a commitment and so should my books be."

"Granted," he added it to the contract. "But in exchange for this extension..."

He looked her up and down. In his eyes she was a beauty that outshone the greatest beauties of an age where it was the work of a few spells to sculpt a face into a vision of surpassing loveliness but she clothed herself in such hideous rags. It was like looking at the peerless work of a master artist be enshrined in a midden heap. His aesthetic sense was in agony.

_:Even worse is the thought of her trailing about my elegant hallways wearing those awful Dalish rags of hers!:_ Solas thought with the pained feeling of an aesthete confronted with something of utter banality in an otherwise matchless vista.

"You shall wear the clothes I give you," he said decisively. "Something more befitting than those... garments of yours."

Merrill looked down a bit self-consciously and frowned at him in a defensive manner.

"What's wrong with my clothes?" she demanded. "All Dalish Firsts wear these."

"We shall start with that, and go from there," Solas muttered in the elven tongue, knowing full well she couldn't understand him.

Merrill at least seemed to be aware of the threadbare condition of her clothes since she fingered a particularly worn spot on her emerald green tabard self-consciously.

"Besides," he said in a persuasive tone. "You are well past being a mere First anymore. And--"

He thought quickly for an argument that would sway her.

"And would you not like to be the only Dalish to dress in the authentic garments of ancient Arlathan?"

The first part wounded her pride, but the second part got her attention.

"Well, I suppose... A keeper's job _is_ to remember and to restore what she can, after all. I suppose that means clothes too."

Solas tried not to feel smug in his victory. Things truly _were_ going his way. He added the agreed-upon conditions into the contract and they discussed a few other matters that were too important to be left out, such as whether her family would be expected to share her the matrilineal name (Dalish society traced family through the mother) and what the bairns future living accommodations would be and whether or not Merrill would be allowed to remain a part of its life once the bairn was weaned. Apparently, Merrill's female blood-kin were well-known among the Dalish for consistently breeding mage-born babies, and thus sought after for body-heir contracts... 

_:Which explains how she seems to know the ins and outs of making such arrangements despite the fact that looks to be the first such agreement shes ever entered into. Likely she learned at her mother's knee,:_ he thought in amusement. 

It also explained why his offer had been received with surprise but not any culture shock. The Dalish in general and her family in particular had retained the practice of body-heir contracts in their culture. For haggling over the terms of the body-heir contract, things truly were moving quite apace. In Arlathan, such negotiations could drag on for weeks, some had even been held over the course of several years, but an agreeable arrangement with regard to all of the particulars was reached in a little over an hour.

"If you would sign here, of your courtesy," he said, indicating the correct place for Merrill to place her signature and handing her a brush.

Merrill nicked the pad of her thumb with the ease of long practice using a sharp little knife she kept on her person and dipped the stiff tip of the brush in the small pool of blood on the inkstone, then paused.

"You have to sign too," she said in a tone that suggested that she very much expected him to try to weasel out of it and that she wasn't signing until she'd seen him do it first.

Solas gamely poked his own thumb and deftly signed the characters of both his use-name and his elgar'in name, making the terms of his contract fully binding upon him. Merrill signed her name in vallan as well, using the combined characters for "softness" and "contemplation." At last, Solas took his contract and sealed it away safely inside of the bejeweled scroll tube and turned to Merrill.

"Well, now that I have honored the manner that _your_ people agree to seal their contracts, you must now honor _my_ customs," he said, trying not sound too eager. 

"Eh?" Merrill asked, cocking her head at him in clueless innocence. "Your customs? Did they do things differently in Arlathan?"

"Body-heir contracts were handled in a special way," he said, loosening his mantle a bit and tugging at the collar of his plain tunic to make it easier to remove. "Most legalities were handled with an official agreement such as a contract, but a body-heir contract was always sealed by a demonstration of good faith on the part of both parties."

With a simple twist of his magic, Solas dispelled the tile mosaic that disguised the arched doorway behind the dais where they had signed the contract. Behind the hidden archway was an intimate chamber with frescoed walls (depicting suggestions of the best positions for sealing the contract with) for the final step in sealing a traditional body-heir contract in. The room was dominated by a large, round dais at knee-height. The dais held a thick Arlathani bed made of the elvhen made-material called sleeping-foam and a multitude of textured coverings and cushions arranged invitingly. The bed was hung all around with sheer fabric of pale gold-film to accent the many pillows and blankets in neutral beige accented with pale gold and sage-green in elfknot patterns.

Before she had a chance to react to the sudden disappearance of the door, Solas stood and swiftly scooped her up in his arms to carry her through the archway and into the chamber. With a flick of his fingers he lit the candles all about the room, banishing the harsh white light of wisplight and bathing the room in a romantic golden ambiance. At the foot of the bed lay a small golden chest into which he placed the sealed scroll tube, then slid the box into a fitted slot in the dais. According to tradition, the contract wasn't sealed unless the binding ritual took place over-top the contract. He'd heard that in some crude arrangements, they'd just fucked on the table, but he had more class than _that,_ certainly!

"Ummm..." Merrill said hesitantly, taking everything in. "I... I don't think they're dancing, are they?"

"Astute of you," he said cheerfully.


	3. Awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final warning, so much smut ahead. I hope you all enjoy my adventurous foray into adult content.

He turned to Merrill, holding out his hand. She looked anxious and uncertain suddenly, despite the fact that she'd willingly signed a contract with him (or rather, because of it). Solas wondered once again just how bad his reputation among her people had to be to make her look so very fearful. He did not want her coming to his bed weeping with terror. That sort of thing did not appeal to him in the least. When he had taken a bed flower, he'd always enjoyed time with one when they were willing and enthusiastic. He intended that this time should be no different for he'd not have his partner unwilling. It would just take a little extra effort to reassure her, but seeing as their arrangement would likely continue for some time, he wished to make a good first impression on her so that she would see thier arrangement as a shared gift rather than an onerous chore to be gotten through.

"Come now, there isn't any need to be shy," he said, trying to soothe and coax her out of her fright. "Even the Dalish will spit into a palm to exchange fluids when a bargain is struck. This is similar in concept. It is considered an act of good faith, a way of saying that you fully intend to follow through on your end of the agreement."

"Oh.." Merrill said, looking a bit faint. "A-are... are you going to turn into a wolf, then?"

_Where_ had she heard that non-sense from? Turn into a wolf, for _this_? What silliness! He could just imagine the tales told round the campfire to frighten the Dalish younglings. Still, she looked so daunted by the thought of possibly having to lie with him while he wore the form of a wolf that he felt immediately sorry for her. 

:_She must really want that library_,: he thought, shaking his head. 

"No, my dear," he said firmly, wrapping her hands in his to warm them where they had apparently went cold with fear. "What you see here is what we shall enjoy."

The centuries spent in uthenera had changed a number of his features due to the need to maintain the spelled sleep for so long. His hair had been shorn and did not grow, his skin had went from sun-kissed bronze to the pale countenance he now sported, his eyes were bleached an icy-pale blue, but he at least still retained his war-mage physique. His shoulders were broad, his chest and stomach smooth, streamlined and well muscled, his figure strong and elegant. Solas wouldn't have called himself vain, but he did take a certain smug pleasure in his appealing appearance. In Arlathan, even if his lofty titles and miraculous achievements had not been enough to recommend him, his classical elvhen physique had always garnered admiration enough wherever he went to make him feel confident in his attractiveness. He unfastened the hidden closures of the simple tunic he wore as "Solas the Hedge-Mage" the unassuming persona he wore while he remained with the Inquisition. The crude, hand-sewn garment fell open to either side and he shrugged it off, leaving only the worn trousers and his spirit totem hanging around his neck. It was with some confidence in his attractiveness that he said

"I trust that this does not disappoint." 

It had better not. He had been considered a very desirable catch indeed in Arlathan!

"Now..."

He led her over to the dais and guided her to sit on the edge of the bed, and, kneeling next to her to meet her gaze at an equal level, gently pushed back the mantle of wolfs fur he'd given her from her shoulders, letting it fall to the side.

"Let us seal our contract in good faith, shall we?" he said with a kindly look.

Merrill answered with a tentative smile, so Solas took the time to further reassure her.

"Know, Merrill, that I do not enter into such binding arrangements lightly," he said. "I am as bound in this as you are. I will be your shield and shelter while you bide within my Household, believe in that if you believe in nothing else."

Merrill regarded him with wide, serious eyes. He did not know precisely what customs the Dalish had with regard to such things, but evidently they were similar enough to his own customs that she felt comfortable entrusting herself to his keeping on the promise of their contract. She seemed nervous still, and Solas, though he had used every art to finagle the Dalish beauty into his bed, his pride as a man chafed at the idea that she would see it as an onerous chore to be gotten through rather than the gift that it was.

"Would you..." he hesitated, clearing his throat which had suddenly went dry.

Nervous? Him? It truly _had_ been a long time!

"Is there anything I might get for you?" he offered. "Some... some wine, perhaps?"

She looked at him a bit blankly.

"You are trembling, a bit," he said, feeling slightly awkward.

"I'm," she hesitated. "I'm just a bit nervous, is all. I haven't done this. Er, I mean, thatisI_have_\--the sex, I mean, not the body-heir contract, that's my first one I've ever made but I'm not, er, I'm not all _untouched_ but... I haven't been touched _often_. Or in a long time, well not a _very_ long time. That is I'm not so _very_ experienced. I mean..." she seemed to catch herself rambling. "I'm babbling, I'll stop."

She glanced nervously at the murals on the walls.

"I'm not sure some of these are even _possible_," she added, looking terribly intimidated. "Not without throwing out a hip, anyway."

Solas looked back at her for a long moment then around them at all of the lurid paintings on the walls (none of which _he_ had been responsible for, certainly!) and all of his previous nerves melted away into a soft chuckle.

"My dearest beauty," he said in Evelon, the language spoken in Arlathan. "I'm not going to insist on such bedroom acrobatics, though if you wish to be creative I've no objection."

Merrill gave him an inquisitive look so he switched to her crude Dalish creole.

"And I find I must agree with your assessment about the potential injury in undertaking these maneuvers without some forethought and planning. Allow me to select something better befitting the occassion."

Solas called up the rooms pre-set menu and altered the settings a bit. The walls flicked through a few scenes, before he settled on a forest scenery. She was Dalish, perhaps it would allow her to feel comfortable. He changed the mattress and pillows to match it, and added in a soft ambient noise of a forest with a small waterfall nearby. Merrill looked gratifyingly impressed. With a few flicks of his fingertips, Solas added in a few personal touches to help set the mood a little better. Candles now glowed out from within the folds of flowers that perfumed the air with a heady, sensual scent and the temperature warmed a few degrees. He was pleased to see her relax a bit and congratulated himself on a good call.

"And as for your experience or lack of it," he said in a soothing tone. "Each person is different. In all honesty, it has been _some while_ for me too. Pay no thought to such things. I will not be evaluating you on your performance, nor will I speak of our arrangement with anyone else."

He pulled her hands to his chest and rested them flatly there.

"See?" he jested lightly. "No paws. No fur."

Merrill smiled shyly at him and said

"Are you certain you're the Dread Wolf then? You're not much as the old stories paint you, at least from what I can see."

"Nor are you much like the Dalish paint you, Merrill formerly of Sabrae Clan," Solas replied. "It seems with both of us suffer from fearsome reputations."

Merrill looked at him with solemn, sad eyes and said

"There's some truth in mine, though not as much as the rumors say."

"Likewise," Solas said with a dry tone. "But let us be done speaking of the Dalish. This is not a time when I would bandy about much with words. My dear old friend Mythal's greatest working in the world has turned up a match for me, against all odds, and i would see if the wonder-tales about Bondings and Blessings are true, or merely a lot of ancient fairytales meant to get her unsuspecting specimens to go along with her plans for them."

She took a step closer and reached out her palm to timidly touch his bared chest, right where Mythal's Mark lay. There was a soft note of music that hummed through his magic as the song that lay beneath her skin contacted his own. It was like the sweet whine of a violin joining the deeper basso note of a cello in perfect harmony. The spot of warmth where her hand touched him began to spread outward. His aura of magic expanded from his body reaching outward to envelop Merrill, and her own mage-fire grew beyond her body and reached back for him. It was like floating in an ocean, a sensation of the two of them there hanging suspended in the moment. Warmth and pleasure flowed between them, and he knew, somehow, that this was only the beginning.

"It seems that there is some truth to the rumors," Solas murmured softly, caught up in the wonder of it despite his previous cynicism about the whole thing.

The particular notes and patterns of their individual soul-songs began to interweave. Solas drew in a sharp breath of surprise.

_:I'd heard stories from those who had joined their marks...:_ he thought in disbelief. _:But I had thought them all to be exaggeration, a way to play to the hopes of the ignorant masses. This is...:_

It felt incredible. So pure, so good, so indescribably sweet as their magic touched each other on levels beyond the flesh and beyond the Fade. Merrill looked up at him, fear and nervousness gone and in its place the first glimmer of desire. She stepped closer and put her other hand up to his chest, running her palm over his bare skin and enjoying the sweet hum of their magic frissioning along their flesh, waking deeper, pleasurable sensations within them. With their magics entangling, even the touch of her single fingertip on his skin felt as intense as a caress along his cock.

:I hadn't imagined that it would feel this intense,: he thought to himself in amazement as her magic called greater magic up from within him.

His long dormant magic wakened at her touch. In the places where she touched him, his skin lit from within in diamond-pale radience, as if he'd swallowed the moon and it shone out from within him. Light smeared irridescent-white in finger-trails up his ribs as her fingertips trailed down his chest. He felt a wrenching sense of loss when she drew her hand away sharply at the probably, to her, unnerving sight of his godlight.

There was a reason why all of the surviving murals painted on caves and ruins of he and his brethren evanuris were all depicted with glowing halos of light around them. Modern scholars of course, argued that the halos had been an artistic device used to depict, _figuratively_, their divinity. There was nothing figurative about them. The evanuris had glowed from the power of their mage-fire. As long as their feet were in contact with the world and magical field they'd claimed, they were connected to their Foci, and thus, with their Places of Power. They glowed with that magical energy.

_:I've not seen the least sign of my godlight since I'd fallen into uthenera,:_ he thought, swamped with a wave of wonder and relief for her had partly feared that it might be lost to him forever.

Merrill had done this. She had wakened this within him, her touch had returned his gift of magic. Even at a mere _touch_, their magics had achieved a level of compatibility that most contracted pairings labored for years, for _decades_, to achieve. He knew now that that their pairing would be a true, fruitful one. She would bear a child of his issue. With a magical compatibility this strong, even with his great power, there was little doubt in his mind that he could get her with his child.

_:Well, once she has been properly prepared that is,:_ he amended to himself. :_Still_...:

An overwhelming feeling of elation, and excitement and triumph and delight welled up within him and his magic answered. His vision blurred to silver as the godlight spread out and brought more magic answering magic to his call. Merrill, looking up into his eyes, no doubt must have seen the stormy silverlight of his true power. She gasped and tried to draw back in fear but he instinctively caught her wrist and kept her anchored there.

"Do not be alarmed," he said, holding her wrist firmly. "This won't hurt you. _I_ won't hurt you. It is merely the unexpected, and somewhat premature, return of my, er, _nature_ I suppose you could say."

With an effort of will, Solas pushed the power back down within him, and his eyed returned to the drab, common colors of the material world and his ordinary physical senses. 

Merrill had a plain look of "what in the Void is going on?!" about her but was clearly too unnerved to even manage to babble. He pulled her hand back to his chest and held it flat there with his own then allowed her to snatch it back.

"See what your touch has wakened in me?" he murmured. 

Merrill stared down at her hand as though she'd never seen it before. Solas' eyes narrowed in satisfaction as glanced at her palm and saw the intricate swirling mandala patterns of her own inner magical flowpaths glowing beneath the surface of her skin. Spirals, and knot-works, flowers and geometrics in light-colors as brilliant and saturated as the dawn moved and shifted with the steady pulse of her heartbeat.

"What are these?" she asked him in confusion. "I've seen pictures like them before in ancient scrolls but..."

"The are sai'shii," he explained, inwardly despairing and wondering at, any mages ability to cast magic while being unaware of something that was, to him and his people, the basics of the basics. 

"Sai'shii?" Merrill asked.

"Your body has seven gateways of magical power called san'shii'an," he explained. "Right down the trunk of you. Each has its own magical and spiritual resonance, its own strength and weakness, and each has its own color. You pull magic through the Fade through your gateways and it flows into channels, or flowpaths. These channels, called sai'shii enable you to shape the magic to your will."

"Oh! Yes, san'shian! But my Keeper says we have only _three_..."

"You posses seven," he corrected her firmly. "But three of them are the most powerful."

Merrill looked like she would very much have liked to argue the point, most likely based on the fact that she could only see three of them manifested, but Solas had not come here for lessons or to engage in magical debate with her. Particularly not when she was wrong and looked like she would not enjoy being told so. She could debate Dalish magical theory with him after he had sealed thier contract and not before. So naturally he chose to distract her. Playing a hunch, Solas reached out and touched his palm to her solar plexus and was gratified to see her Heart san'shii'an flare into bloom, the green light of compassion flaring out strongly from within her.

:I was right, her compassion is her strongest attribute, likely followed by her will,: he thought, pleased.

His own soulfire flared green in response to hers, thier inner songs resonating strongly with one another.

"Our magics are so closely matched that they push and pull at each other," he said to her, bringing the back of her hands to his lips to kiss them. "Your inner magefire calls out my own, as mine does yours. This is why you can see your sai'shii when you apparently cannot normally, and this must be why my godlight returns when you touch me."

Merrill, apparently curious now, ran a fingertip over his skin again and watched with rapt fascination as his skin lit from within by iridescent moon-glow. He shivered at her touch, the feeling so exquisite that he hungered for another. He'd lived for _centuries_, for ages and ages, and he'd never felt a touch upon him so _clearly_ before. It made him want to feel it all over him, made him want to feel their bodies and magics entwine. Hunger nearly summoned his great power again, but he held himself back. If her tiny flame of soulfire came too close to his own mighty nova before she had been through the proper rituals to prepare and protect her, she would be as a candle before the sun, a single flare and she would be consumed forever.

Solas paused, torn between his greedy hunger of the moment and his desire for the future. He could fall upon her now and drive her to madness with pleasure as he took his fill to feed his hunger. He could make her beg and scream with ecstasy so intense it would shatter her hold on her mind as he thrust himself inside of her, but such intoxicating power and pleasure would be as a raging flood, washing away everything in its path and leaving destruction in its wake. He must coax her to pleasure, come upon her softly so that she would adjust to him. There would be time for the flood, but she must be prepared to meet it.

"Come to me, my beauty," he murmured, guiding her gently backwards, deeper onto the bed.

She didn't resist when he unwound the knotted pale green scarf at her throat, nor when he found the fastenings at the joins of the furred pauldrons on her shoulders and unbuckled them, tugging off the leather and mail arms of her body armor. Her tabbard hung suspended from two buckles, covering the brown leather body-mail she wore beneath. He left the bulk of her armor alone for the moment and slid his hands down her shoulders, feeling the silky texture of her skin and the soft, subtle hum of their magics attuning to one another. 

"Slender and pale as birch-trees in the moonlight," he murmured, admiring his new treasure. 

Solas lay a kiss upon the inner side of her wrist then paused, taken a bit aback at what he saw. Marks, hundreds of them. Lesions on her skin, some young and pink, some pale and old, crisscrossing her wrists and up her arms to the elbows. He looked up at her in surprise. He could read her magic, she spirit was not of a sort that would harm herself...

"Oh... er, Um." she said, looking a little chagrined. "I don't know if anyone's told you my, er, little specialty. We didn't mention it to the Inquisition because, well, people tend to get a bit squiffy about it even though I'm very careful and I've not had a single possession or demon or anything!"

"Beg pardon?" he said.

"Blood mage," she said, pulling back. "I'm a blood mage. I know what you're going to say but I have it handled!"

She glared defiantly back at him, daring him to disagree with her, like probably everyone she'd ever met before until now.

"Clearly," he replied, accepting it. "Many of these are very old, and you do not show the least signs of possession, benign or otherwise. Magic is magic. If you know what you're about, and you trust in yourself completely, there is no risk in blood magic that doesn't exist in other magics. It is power that corrupts and not magic."

She beamed at him with a beatific smile, brilliant as the dawn.

"Exactly!" she said, clearly very pleased to find someone, perhaps for the first time _ever_, agreeing with her point of view for once.

"Now that we've gotten the finer points of your vocation out of the way," he said, turning his attention back to undressing her. "Where were we?"

He did not favor needing to finagle with the crude Dalish costume, for the mail was high-collared underneath the scarf and tabbard and had a number of fastening running up the side. He had promised to provide new clothing for her in the style of Aralthan and she had pledged that she would wear it as part of her contract, thus, the worn and tattered Dalish vestments were better disposed of.

He tilted up her chin and leaned in, capturing her lips in a soft kiss that was in no-way hesitant. Despite whatever lessons in humility he might have received as a result of his actions in forming the Veil, Solas had never been a man given to hesitance. He was eager, yet he didn't want to frighten or discomfort her with his impatience, so rather than pushing in boldly to overwhelm her with feeling, he chose to linger softly on her lips, enjoying her taste. And she was sweet. 

He could feel her spiritual presence resonating through her magic, a curious mix of self-possession and self-effacement, of compassion and perseverance, curiosity and willfulness. She cared deeply and when she'd made her decision she did not attempt to escape it's consequences. The taste of her spirit lingered on his tongue, an intoxicating mix of a hundred ephemeral sensations; a draught as brilliant as the midsumer dawn in the fields of Arlathan, scented of the forest after a rain and sweetest berries warmed by the sun. These and a hundred other impressions invoked a sense of great beauty and of belonging. Despite his original designs he pressed in, eager for a deeper, fuller taste of her. Without his summoning it, his deep magic welled up within him pressing forward in his kiss, eager to catch her magefire on his tongue.

Her breath caught as her skin touched the edge of the silverstorm welling up within him. The silvery energy pushed out beyond his skin, saturating the aura around him and sliding against her small trickle of soulfire, sending rippling harmonious notes through her body, he could feel the pleasant echo of them in his own magic and it only whetted his appetite for more. Merrill, however, jerked away, gasping as if he'd stung her with an electric shock. She looked at him with wide, surprised eyes, clearly never having encountered anything the least bit like it.

"Apologies," he murmured softly. "Are you alright?"

"What was that?" she asked.

"Roughly translated into your tongue, godlight. It is another sign of my power reawakening within me. You needn't be alarmed, I give you my word that it will not harm you."

To the contrary, if everything worked out well, it would perhaps restore to her the gift that had been lost to her people. He didn't say that however, best not to get her hopes up in case it didn't work out.

"You taste like the air before a summer storm," she said in a musing tone. "And like something else... something lost, yet still lingering there. Like a memory from a dream."

In reply he merely kissed her again, and with a deft, subtle twist of magic he deconstructed the remaining materials of her Dalish Vestments. The threads of fabric and rings of chainmail floated away in soft motes of light, leaving her soft skin bared to his touch. Her skin pressed to his was like kissing her. There was a warmth that transcended mere body heat, a subtle sweetness that shivered though them both at every place their bodies touched. Their magics moved together by instinct and it was delightful.

"Wha-!!" she gasped, pulling back suddenly and covering her bared flesh with her hands as best she could before grabbing the filmy silken sheet from beneath her and pulling it upwards to try to cover with. 

"Where are my clothes?!" she demanded in shock.

"Gone," he replied simply, trying to press back in so that he could press his mouth to her newly bared flesh and test to see if it tasted as good as it felt against his magic.

"Well bring it back!" she demanded.

"No," he replied, tugging on the sheet she was attempting to use to cover her pretty body with. "I would have peeled you out of them soon anyway, and this way is much more expedient. You are exquisitely beautiful, why should you wish to hide yourself from me?"

"I..." Merrill looked like she didn't know what to say. "You think I'm beautiful?"

"Indeed," he confirmed.

He felt an unexpected pang of pity when she stared at him like she didn't quite dare believe him. 

"It is true," he assured her. "Would I have expended so much effort to get you here into bed with me if I did not find you perfectly formed to match my every desire?"

"You must have odd tastes," Merrill said in disbelief, shaking her head a bit as if in bemusement. 

Solas ignored this and leaned back in to capture her lips again, even as he reached out with his magic to enfold it with hers. He pressed gently, feeling his power meld with hers as she breathed him in. It was dizzying, the sensations of her kiss. Leaf and Star but she was _everything_ he'd ever wanted. Restraint was becoming more challenging than he'd originally thought that it might be. Increasingly he was dissatisfied with but a gentle taste when the feast was laid before him, and he was growing more desperate for a deeper taste of her. He wanted to taste every bit of her, all along her body. 

"It is the rest of the world that has overlooked a treasure," he said. "I assure you that, in Arlathan, I was well known for my exquisite taste and impeccable discernment."

He left off kissing her mouth and gently nudged her head to one side, nuzzling in and nibbling along her jaw and ear, seeking that sensitive spot at the join of her neck and shoulder. She made an adorable noise between a squeak and a small gasp of pleasure when he found the spot he sought and lathed it with his tongue, following up with a nibbling suck that caused another small, pleasured noise from her. Her essence opened more to him, every point he kissed her at glowed with the mark of his touch. Intricate shii'an elfknots spiraled out from her san'shii'an, tattooing her body with light as he awakened her power.

"Lay back my beauty," he murmured, gently guiding her back and down. 

Merrill lay out on the bed as he bid her to, her calves and feet hanging off the edge and the rest of her body supine, looking back at him pensively. He wasn't certain what to say or do in order to ease her anxiety. He partly pitied her. She'd clearly never once known the touch of magefire against her body. Sex when the Veil was thick seemed unbearably crude for a man who came from a world where sex and magic were never separate, where language was just as much an expression of magic as a noise of sound and breath. She only saw with her eyes, only heard with her ears, only felt with her body, and it seemed like the saddest thing he'd ever seen. 

"Will you welcome my touch, if I show you something new?" he asked softly. "I promised to teach you the ways of Arlathan, I could start immediately if you wanted."

"Here? Now?" she asked, uncertainly.

"Here. Now," he replied, softly caressing a hand down her skin and watching as her dormant magical flowpaths glimmered slowly into wakefulness within her. 

She wasn't quite as magically stunted as the rest of her kind, either that, or his touch wakened the natural gift that belonged to all of their people. If that was so, she was going to fare better with being impregnated and carrying his child if her true gifts were fully awakened. It would also make their joinings more intense.

"Before I claim you, and take you into my household, I want to show you what I offer," he continued, stroking his hand over her belly, massaging her there. It was more than a mere physical caress, he was also pressing into her san'shii'an with his own magic, picking apart the tangled knotwork and trying to, in essence, pick the lock on her inner gateway which would open her to more magic. 

Her san'shii'an was already partly opened, the mages of these crude times had a basic use of their san'shii;an, but nothing like as refined as what had been understood in his world. Her body shivered and shuddered at his touch as the gateway opened just a little wider. He massaged his fingertips over the convex surface of her slim belly, coaxing, cajoling and the gate unsealed just a bit more, allowing more magic to trickle through the flowpaths of her body.

"Oh!" she gasped in surprise, sensing the change within her.

He watched in satisfaction and no little aesthetic rapture as a wave of magic rippled from her center to her extremities, colors of magic flooding her aura even more intense than before. Merrill's spirit shone bright and clear, dominated by the delicate green of the Heart san'shii'an, and the soft pale blue of the Mind san'shii'an, flickering around the edges was the copper-rose of her Water san'shii'an, and the golden-yellow of her Fire san'shii'an. In modern mages the colors were drab and muddy and unappealing to look upon, but Merrill's colors...

_:I long for my brushes and paints,:_ he thought absently. 

It seemed a shame to let such beauty pass by without tribute or sign.

"It feels warm," she slurred a bit drunkenly.

The heady warmth of the magical resonance of the lowest san'shii'an, the gate of sensual and sexual pleasure, probably felt like fire and brandy and sex wafting along her body. He could feel the echo of it singing through her aura and he bent down, kissing her navel and inhaling the cloud of magefire wafting off her skin. It emitted from within her the same way a body gave off heat. Solas closed his eyes, basking in the feel of it. So warm and pure and bright. It was as if the universe had blended together a cocktail of all of the things he loved most and best and set it before him to drink his fill. It was perfect. She was perfect. He ached for a deeper taste.

"Open a little wider for me," he said, sliding a hand down her belly, kneading rhythmically.

His fingertips danced along the glowing flowpaths under her skin with the deft surety of a master musician playing his favored instrument. Her power awakened to his touch and he felt echoes of it rippling out from within her through their combined magical fields.

"That's it," he coaxed softly. "Relax, let go." 

He nudged her inner gateway just a bit wider and another little wave of power rushed along her body's flowpaths, eliciting a gasp of surprise and pleasure from her. Solas "plucked" one of her flowpaths watching as sensations rippled outward in her magic down her flowpaths.

"Oh that feels... that's so good," she murmured, almost drunk on the sensations of it.

It wasn't surprising, the first rush of magic could be as intoxicating as any heavy drink. Perhaps it was not for nothing that they were called "spirits." Solas caressed a fingertip down past her belly and slipped it softly into the folds of her flowerbud, parting her inner lips to test her body's reaction to his attentions. He could feel the hot honey of her nectar, mixed with the magefire within her, already coating her insides. He sent a tiny little frission of magic spark feeling up inside of her and she squeaked adorably as her body jerked in surprise. She was still very tight with nervous tension and he would have her at ease.

"Not quite yet," he murmured, bringing his attention back to working her body open.

With the knowledgeable touch of a master irhu-player at his instrument, Solas caressed his hands and magic along the threads of her gateway, sending washes of heat, like currents in a warm bath, along her skin, inside of her skin, mimicking the rhythm he was going to take when he was inside of her. She squirmed and shivered and he sent tickling notes of pleasure singing along her body. He caressed a fingertip at a small node where two flowpaths met and pulled on her magic there, wakening it and sending shivery sensations rippling out from that point. A flowering elfknot bloomed under her skin at his touch. He watched her pant and flush and arch her back to chase down the sensations his touch roused in her, sucking in her breath as she instinctively bit her soft, full lips.

"Feel that?" he murmured in her ear.

"Oh yes," she whispered, arching her back up to chase down more of his touch.

He obligingly trailed a fingertip down along the flowpath he was currently tracing, her magic hummed beneath his fingertip, amplifying the feeling of pleasure he'd sent racing along her flowpath. 

"There is more to be had," he promised her. "This is barely the surface. Such depths I will show you in time."

He kissed her lips again, magic spilling between them, catching and tangling. His skin started to glow silver-white as their magics began to combine. Solas hid his surprise and inner delight at such a swift beginning. In the far past, reaching such a ready confluence of magic had been regarded as near-miraculous, and all but guaranteed that the union would be a fruitful one. The thought of her swollen as ripe fruit with his child quickened his blood and flooded his body with heat. His eagerness welled up within him once more as she arched up into his touch.

"That's it, my beauty," he murmured into her lips as he kissed her hard, working his hands over her belly and wanting much, much more. "Are you ready for more? Will you be good for me?"

"It's so hot and I feel it everywhere. It's like standing in a storm. It feels so intense," she panted, and wriggled a bit. "It's almost too much to feel all at once and at the same time I feel like I'll die if you stop."

"Do you want me to stop?" he asked, even as he pushed just a little more magic sparking between them in a sharper sensation, causing her to writhe against him, hands tightening on his back until her red fingernails dug indents into his skin.

"No!" she cried out needfully. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."

"That's my beauty," he murmured in satisfaction as he noted the Mark of Mythal's blessing flash with golden light like a ray of dawnlight.

Pulling his totem-necklace out of the way, Solas leaned over her, covering her body with his own, and laid his mark against hers. With a deft twist of his magic, like a key clicking over into a lock, he sealed her mark to his as he kissed her once again and sent his magic in a caressing wave down her skin, over-whelming her senses with stimulating contact.

"You are _my_ beauty now," he whispered in her ear, unable to contain his satisfaction.

"Ahn-n-n," she moaned writhing a little when he suckled at the side of her neck, causing her throat san'shii'an to blossom out with nascent power. 

Her magefire welled up inside of her reaching for him. 

"I will awaken you," he promised her. "You're mine. You belong to my household. Your baby is mine..."

Solas closed his eyes fighting back a powerful wave of possessive lust. Even the most ancient and powerful of the elvhen, even the god-kings, were prone to affairs of the flesh, especially when they pertained to progeny. They'd all played at the veneer of civilization, of contracts and arrangements... but in the bedchamber the immortal elvhen were as possessive, as claiming, as needy and demanding as any common mortal of the present era. Even Solas was no exception to this, it turned out. Civilization and manners would inevitably fall away in the face of that hunger.

"I'll put a child in you," he murmured in Evelon, embarrassed by the crudity of his desire. "Your belly will swell with it."

He tilted her head back to kiss her once more as he sealed their Marks together. He could feel their magics starting to attune with one another, their individual frequencies harmonizing and resonating in an ever-echoing song that fed and fed back on each other. Solas pushed in with his aural field, reaching for her spiritual energy gateways and loosening them. The corresponding rush of power that ensued his nudging open the inner gateways sealing her magic flushed throughout her body in a gentle swell, causing her to gasp at the unexpected sensation of it. He tickled along her flowpaths in its wake, teasing and caressing with his own magic, plucking a note here or there and watching with self-congratulatory smugness as she responded with delight and fervor to the erotic sensations he pulled from her.

Solas could feel the echoes of her arousal rippling back into his own flesh where their magic had entangled. It was as if she'd caressed her fingertips gently over the sensitive flesh of his inner thighs, teasing but not quite touching him where he wanted to be touched. It felt exquisite, but unsatisfying. He longed for more, longed to feel her entangled fully with him. He pulled and pushed along her flowpaths, causing her energy to rise and ebb, his own energies following hers in a suggestive rhythm that made them both hot all over as it roused their inborn instincts to mate. Indeed she pressed against him and writhed her hips full to his in an instinctive echo of that rhythm, seeking to fulfill its pattern, to close the dance between them and ease the ache growing within her.

"Do you like this, my beauty?" he murmured into her ear.

He was so far gone with desire he wasn't even sure of he'd said it in his native tongue, or in her Dalish creole.

"I need more!" she gasped. "It's hot, and I feel like I'm burning but I want more. Please..."

"Does it feel good?" he asked gently, pushing and pulling currents of power within her in a suggestive, pleasuring rhythm, mimicking what he planned to do with her presently. 

He could feel it now, the swell of magic and sex within her, twining and mingling with his, the way the pleasure built deep inside. His hands found her breasts, kneading and scraping her nipples as she moaned into his mouth. He swallowed her moans and toyed with the sensitive flesh around her nipples, lightly brushing around the hard pebble with his thumb tips, then pressing in, simultaneously sending a tiny spark of stormfire in to titillate her. She gasped, shocked, but instead of pulling away in surprise, her body instinctively jerked closer to his own, chasing the pleasing sensations he woke in her.

"So soft, my beauty," he murmured, pulling away from her lips and kissing down to her breasts.

He took the soft flesh of one of her breasts in his mouth, savoring the taste of the magefire that rose off from her skin in the scent of cedar and roses, with the heady taste of wine and fire and honey. He suckled, gently at first, toying with the tip of his tongue, then harder, scraping his teeth delicately over it, while he stimulated the other tit with sparks from his fingertips. He heard a breathy moan and she wriggled closer to him, pressing tight against him and hooking a calf around the small of his back to bring them closer together. The bare flesh of her belly slid against his own abdomen, magic mixing and flowing between them now as their magic attuned more fully.

He'd never encountered such ready attunement before! In the normal course of such arrangements, such a close magical attunement was the work of months of careful planning and ritual, but she attuned to him as though she had been meant to echo his song.

"So perfect, I can feel everything inside of you," he murmured to her. 

He kissed and suckled back up her breasts, then along her collarbone and nuzzled deep into the crevice under her ear, inhaling the scent of her hair and her magic. While one hand cupped and toyed with a breast, the other slid down her side, over her ribs and cupped the curve of her hip, tilting it upwards slightly. She followed his subtle guide and moaned when the fleshy tip of her flowerbud contacted his body, just above his member. She pressed harder against him, wriggling against the slim bones of his hip as he turned himself slightly. He felt her growl in frustration as she chased after him, trying to stimulate the feeling she wanted where she wanted it.

"Patience, my beauty," he murmured. "I will give you all you desire and more, that you may be assured of."

He needed no further indication of her willingness now, it was simply a matter of awaiting his own biological limitations, which to his great surprise were not manifesting in the ways he was accustomed to. His own body was coming awake and alive with almost distressing alacrity. The elvhen in ancient days had needed a longer while to fully awaken, even during a casual tryst. Perhaps it had been a mere biological quirk that had stemmed from their incredibly long lives, or perhaps custom was to blame, but the true elvhen had done nothing with any haste, including mating. 

They'd been nothing like these mayfly elves of modern times. Once, during his time recovering from Uthenera in the care of one of Mythal's pet Dalish Clans, he'd accidentally peripherally witnessed a coupling between two young elflings in the Clan. They snuck off to have thier tryst right beneath the tree he'd been napping in. The whole enthusiastic business had taken less than an hour, and that was even with what appeared to be a good deal of prelude! Solas had been shocked at the time. It had all been done with so quickly! In his world, even casual sex had taken a bit to work up to for both sides involved, it had simply been accepted as a fact of nature.

_:It seems there are some things in nature that have changed in the last two thousand years, or perhaps it is merely that I am more a creature of flesh since waking from uthenera:_

Solas was already hard, and aching with it. He shouldn't have been any where near ready to delve within her, but he was quickly growing ready for her. The shaft of his manhood was flooding with the rose-deep energy of sexual and sensual power from his san'shii'an. It had already risen to prominence. His skin was shifting from a mere glimmer of innate power to a luminous shine of moonbright energy. His body tingled with anticipation, a sensual itch of desperation as her magic called to his, entreating their union.

"See what you do to me my beauty," he whispered into her ear. "Already, I ache for you."

He would have gladly plunged deep within her, feeding their fire with sharp, hungry thrusts, but this was the first joining of what would, in Arlathan, have been a long series of rituals designed to give them optimal conditions for the confluence of magic and flesh needed to create a precious child within her... and he had to consider the _impression_ he wished to make. He was not some rutting halla in a field! Also, he had little desire for a grudging partner in this. It was much better to have her looking forward to his visits, if only because she would know that the outcome would always be pleasant for her (to say the least).

"Will you have me now, my beauty? Will you welcome me? Will you ache for me? I can feel your fire, calling me," he said. "It does not consume you, but it will. It will. And then, I will immolate you on a pyre of ecstasy."

"I'm not sure what it was you said in elvhen," she said in her thick, lilting Dalish accent. "But whatever it was, the answer is yes. And also please hurry up."

He snorted. As if he would ever be so crude! His pride was at stake, after all. He'd not have any lover of his, much less the one who would bear his child, complaining of hasty treatment while in _his_ bed. 

"As much as it pleases me to hear your enthusiastic consent, my beauty," he said. "I'll not hear anything of rushing what is meant to be savored. You have much to learn, and much to be shown."

"It's not meant to be complicated, no-one's asking you to build an eluvian here!" she snapped back in a tone of consternation even as she wriggled her hips closer to him and tried to reach down to position him at her entrance where she clearly wanted him.

He surveyed her with a slow, smug look even as he pinned her arms up over her head with gentle strength. It was telling, to him at least, that she allowed it without any struggle. He nibbled at the over-sensitive tips of her ears which were, like the tips of her breasts, an extremely responsive area of the body. She did indeed respond with unmistakable positivity.

"Such temerity," he said in a slightly admonishing tone as he nipped an eartip firmly in his teeth, eliciting an drawn out moan laced with need from her. 

"If you wanted to be worshiped," she said to him with a teasing smile. "You should have got yourself a proper little Dalish lass."

Solas couldn't help but regard her with amusement.

"Oh?" he said with narrowed interest. "And are you saying you're an _improper_ Dalish lass then? Will I be required to correct your behavior?"

"You'd have to catch me first," she replied impishly.

She was quite the fearless little thing, and Solas quite liked that about her. He pointedly pressed her wrists more firmly into the bed and replied

"I have you caught. Shall I now educate you in my notions of propriety?"

Solas summoned tiny stormspark to his fingertips and gently ghosted a light touch down her breasts and belly, past her hips around to the small of her back where he tickled the weftward side of her san'shii'an, pushing sexual energy out along her flowpaths. He watched with bemused, smug satisfaction as she was once more flooded with hot, heady sexual energy all along her body. 

"That doesn't feel at all proper," she breathed, sounding partly dismayed.

So of course he did it again, and this time with more emphasis.

Merrill's head lolled back on her shoulders, eyes fluttering shut on her pretty face, soft petal lips pursed in a moue of delight. While her body shivered in tingling warmth like brandy wine flooding through her, he left one hand to support her lower back and the other hand released her wrists and slid one of her thighs, wrapped tight around his waist, a little bit higher to give him access to her center.

"The Elvhen notion of propriety seems to have shifted while I was away," he said. "I intend to see our contract sealed very properly indeed."

He slipped a hand along the soft, swollen folds of the outer leaves of her flowerbud. Solas felt hot lust almost punch him in the gut as he felt how slick she was already. His fingertips, crackling with lightning-spark, ghosted soft along the outer lips, toying gently with her sensitive flesh, rubbing slickly all along her cleft.

"Shall we enjoy ourselves?" he mused teasingly, sucking the lobe of her ear in between his teeth and nibbling very gently at it while he continued to toy with her nethermost lips.

The movements of his teeth and tongue over her earlobe echoed the movements of his hands over her outer lips, light and measured and utterly unsatisfying. He could feel her mounting frustration in the way she tried to press and wriggle against him, seeking further gratification. Solas obliged her but briefly, slipping a fingertip in between her folds and sending an electric tingling spark up into her passage. A single swipe of his fingertip and her hips jolted, her body tensing and another soft, breathy pant burst from her lips.

"You liked that, I see," he said, dipping his finger back in briefly, sliding down and in the other way. Then up and back, shooting tiny, tickling sparks up inside of her at the apex of each arch. Her inner passages squeezed in and around his fingertips, constricting around his finger like the coils of a serpent and massaging him instinctively with muscle and magic.

Solas froze in surprised shock as the realization of just what he'd found struck him. The feeling of her constricting around him could only mean one thing. She had halas'alaniir... the squeezing coil! Somewhere in her ancestry, one of her kin had been a mage-crafted "pleasurist." 

Due to many considerations; infertility, long, idle lives, and other factors, what the present day people labeled hedonism had not been met with any censure in Aralthan. In a race of people that could shape their bodies with magic, female concubines had often chosen to give themselves a "competitive edge" (as it were) by creating a special series of muscles that lined the passage of their inner flower that could contract, squeezing all about their insides and constricting around their partners member like the firm grip of a hand. The procedure to create the changes in a hallas-concubine had been risky. A failure might mean that they could not bear children at all, but the few successes there had been could, essentially, name their price for a night-time visit, and those few who had been willing to take the risk had demanded a high reward. For even a single night of pleasure, a hallas-concubine could demand great riches, even property and titles if their suitor was in a position to bestow such. Solas had been a celebrated general, lord over his own Province and lionized from one end of the empire to the other, and even he had paid a steep price for a single visit with one.

"You don't even realize it, how rare you are," he mused in amazement. "I've seen flower-wars started over ones such as you are, feuds that lasted decades fought over the prize of a few nights."

His Arlathani instincts whispered conflicting messages; claim her, and make her need it, so that when he came back to her, she would greet him open-armed and waiting. Either way it was clear, prizes such as she did not come along every century. He would keep this one waiting for him, feed his Merrill upon passion and need so that she would not even _look_ at any other. He would fill her with his essence until she was drunk on it, but first, he would make her want it, crave it, _need_ it.

"I'm not sure I understood you," Merrill said in confusion for he had spoken Evelon and not Dalish-style elven.

"There are languages to speak in other than our mother tongue," he said with a gentle kiss. "This, I am certain, will require no translation." 

Merrill made a small whimpering mewl of need as he slid a fingertip deeper inside of her passage, slipping it along the silken folds within and sending tiny fizzling sparks of energy along her to coax and stimulate her. 

"Do you like honey, my beauty?" he murmured. "Your flower makes it, you know. Sweet, sweet nectar, beguiling me to come and taste."

He would drink deeply of her first, feast upon the nectar of her flower until her body flamed tight with desire. Solas slipped his hand out and she made a small distressed noise of loss, he pulled her legs out from around his waist then pulled her knees apart to either side of her, opening her wide. He nibbled and sucked first her collarbone, then down to her breasts, along the underside of each one, then skimmed along the plains of her ribs, along the flat of her stomach. He rested his cheek there a moment to enjoy the silky texture of her skin even as he pressed his clever fingers up within her her folds again, and sent another spark of magic questing up inside of her.

"Solas!" she cried out whole body jerking tense.

"Shhh," he soothed, smoothing a hand over her belly, reaching inward with magic to feel the potentiary magic of the womb waiting within, waiting to bear his child. He stroked her belly longingly, possessively. Soon, there would be his child resting and growing within. He would place it there.

"You are the living end!" she complained mildly to which Solas chuckled and placed an apologetic kiss on her navel.

"Would you prefer that I stop?" he asked, even as he re-positioned her slightly, making it clear he'd no intention at all of stopping at any time soon.

"N-No," she said. "I'd prefer you get on with things."

Solas frowned. "Get on with things" indeed! 

"I suppose I might take your request under consideration," he said. "I shall log it in with the appropriate committee."

Which in Arlathan had been slang for "it shall never again see the light of day."

He kissed inside of her left thigh, suckling until there were silver-bright bruises where he forced her magefire up to the surface to mark her skin. Soft nibbles, bite and bite and bite, dotted up her thigh, stopping just short of the juncture. Then he transferred to the next thigh and treated it as the first. He could feel the tremoring quivers tense along them. He could feel the way her hips tried to press close, anchored in place by his firm grip.

He gazed downward. In his magesight, the crevice of her flower glowed hot as the heart of a mountain, in colors wild and vivid as a summer sunrise. It was breathtaking. Her inner nectar glowed like moonfire, trickling from within her in the scent of rose and cedar cloying as brandywine. He would not partake with only his physical senses, it would echo through along his magic as well, intoxicating and enrapturing. He longed for more than a mere taste. He longed to drink deep of her. She laid out before him like a feast and he starved for her.

"You do not know how beautiful you are to me," he said, looking down at her.

Merrill looked back at him in puzzlement, her dull, mortal senses unable to perceive what he spoke of, but she was so beautiful, so beguiling, that he found that he couldn't bring himself to hold that against her.

"I will give you a taste of what you may look forward to in my bed," he said. 

Merrill looked back, her face a bit pensive, and said

"I'm not entirely certain of... how to return the, er, favor?"

"You need not worry of recompense," he assured her. "It is I who shall favor you. Worry of nothing, my beauty, you are in good hands."

And with that he brought his lips to the outer petals of her flower and with a deft kiss, opened them to him.

Solas made an inarticulate groan in his throat when that first taste of her reached his tongue. She tasted of everything he loved best in all of the world combined into a heady wildfire honey. His tongue lapped greedily at the entrance of her passage before he sucked hard at her lips, swallowing her essence. When that first sweet, fire-filled drop hit the back of his throat his own upper san'shii'an blew open. As the rainbow fire slid down his body, his other centers of power blossomed open like flowers at the dawn. His body was flooded with raw, pure energy, soulmagic welling within him as the heat of it pooled deep in his stomach. His godlight intensified, glowing bright against her. His whole body ached with need now, his cock standing hard, throbbing with primordial power. He wanted to rub it on her, mark her for his own. 

"Oh, my beauty, my beauty, how sweet you taste. So sweet and warm on my tongue," he murmured against the flesh of her passage.

He plunged his tongue deeper inside of her for his first deep taste of her inner fire. He licked and sucked at first, probing gently to find that one secret spot he knew was there. In ones such as Merrill's ancestresses had surely been, there had been a second clitoris even more sensitive and effective than the physical nub of flesh, that reacted solely to magic. Enfolded within the depth of her passage her there was a secret, sweet spot that would react with blackout-inducing intensity to the rush of magic brushed against it. He would find it. He would find it and show her a pleasure she'd never even imagined. Solas licked and flicked and sucked, testing and seeking, reveling in the sweet, intoxicating taste of her nectar while searching along her inner passage...

"Ahhn-nnn-nn!!" she cried out in sudden pleasured shock above him, fingernails digging deeply into his shoulders as her fingers curled clenched tight.

Solas smirked against her flesh. _Found it._

Like a dragon, Solas breathed hot, saturated soulfire upon the soft inner clitoris tucked away deep inside of her inner flower. Sure it was something of a cheat, a quick way to bring a woman to screaming orgasm upon his lips, but Solas has never balked at an easy victory before. Like a master of the forge stoking his fires, Solas breathed hot magic out, then suckled in on her nectar, drinking deep of her. She could feel her shaking and clenching when he repeated it again and again, drawing her out and pushing her hard towards her first orgasm.

"Please, please..." she begged, hot tears streaming down her face as she writhed in agonized ecstasy. "I can't, please!"

He held back another few breaths, dragging it out. He suckled her, keeping her where he wanted her right at the precipice.

"Solas, please, I--" she pleaded. "Mercy, please, mercy! I need you, please. I can't.."

Solas, feeling pleased and obliging at how quickly she came to his call, sent one last sharp jolt of soulfire arrowing deep within her to bring her over the edge. Merrill screamed in pleasure so intense it sounded much like pain but he could feel the echoes of her magic entangled with his within him, and knew that she'd been borne away on a wave of ecsstacy. Solas returned to drinking her flower, eager to enjoy his own treat while she unraveled around him. 

There was no wine to compare to this, her pure, raw essence, her magic from deep within her. The lightning burst of soulmagic flooding like a shockwave out from within her was a bit unexpected in its sheer intensity, the heels drumming on his shoulders and her tiny fists beating on the sides of the bed was undeniably gratifying. It made him, if anything, even harder than he had been. Seeing her, tasting and feeling her unravel into her orgasm around him made him hunger to seal her to him. She was prepared. He had allowed her her taste of what he offered, and now he wished to partake of his own delights. 

A flick of his magic cleaned her nectar from his mouth. Merrill continued to breathe heavy, the crest of the exrcuiating pleasure he'd pulled from within her relinquishing its grip on her but slowly while he watched with an artists eye for beauty. He wanted to paint her. To capture her beauty forever. There would be time for that as well, he assured himself.

"Now my beauty," he kissed his way back up her body, one hand stroking her belly possessively, feeling the echoes of her orgasm thrumming there like the last strains in a plucked guitar string, soulfire rumbling under her skin in gentle resonance.

"Do you see what I offer you?" he asked, nibbling at her neck, while one hand went back to stroking her pleasingly soft breasts again. "That was a mere taste of what awaits you. Does your bargain please you?"

"Yes," she breathed. "I don't care what my Clan or the family thinks of it. I'd brave _any_ censure for _that_."

Solas couldn't help a small, irked feeling at the reminder that her ignorant kin (and likely she herself) thought that _she_ was the one making the foolish bargain. It irritated him that, far from being considered a desirable match (as he would certainly have been in Arlathan, the Lord of Wolfhold Province was never anything to turn ones nose up at, and he'd been _highly_ sought after) her people would ostracize her, perhaps even exile her, for lowering herself to lying with the Dread Wolf. It was most irksome. It was irksome to be considered a lowly match and his pride pricked at it.

_:It's not her fault,:_ he forcibly reminded himself. 

"Then welcome me, my beauty," He urged her. 

"How do I..." She asked uncertainly.

He took one of her small, pale hands, common as mud but still perfect in every proportion. Even the folds of her skin were beautiful to him, he could feel the call of her song, humming beneath the surface. It felt so, so good sliding down his skin. He guided her, stroking her hand over the ridges and planes of his body, leading her to the places he liked to be touched. With fingers twined he showed her where to press and stroke. He sighed, contented as a mated wolf when she followed him downward, kissing the sensitive areas he'd showed her to stroke.

"Oh my beauty," he groaned when she made a particularly lively spark in a crevice along his stomach.

It seemed that he was far more sensitive to her touch than to any other. He felt her more clearly and intensely than he had ever done in any other place but the Fade.

"You cause such delight and feeling within me," he told her. "Such a wondrous match, the confluence of our soulfire, the perfect conformation of every inch of you to my ideal of elvhen perfection. A ten-thousand year miracle. Perhaps it truly is _banal nadas_."

He held himself aloft over her and guided her hand down, down down until she reached the furnace-like heat at his center. He curled her fingers gently around him. He could feel her hesitate and she looked back up at him, uncertainty in her eyes. He soothed her, and showed her how to stroke him, showed her fingers how to explore every crevice of his shaft, taught her other hand to cup him underneath, to rub and stroke gently. She had a deft, soothing instinctive touch and he shuddered with delight in her hands.

When she grew bolder and tightened her grip, stroking him more firmly, he stopped her, however.

"There's plenty of time for play soon enough," he murmured. "I want to claim my contract with you first."

He kissed her deep and hard and hungrily on her mouth as he positioned himself, then whispered hot in her ear

"So you cannot think to deny me my claim upon you."


	4. Chapter 4

Solas positioned himself at her entrance, pausing a moment to enjoy the way their magics responded to one another in this intimate contact. The spark of their mingled magefires lept back and forth between them like an electric current bridging the tiny gap between her flower and his own ready manhood.

He slid himself inside of her not in one hard, hungry jerk, (like some inexperienced, horny adolescent) but slowly by increments, sinking deep within her in a savoring manner. She was tight. Tight and slick. Her inner muscles instinctively constricted around him, massaging him as he pressed in slowly and her inner passage was wet from his good work beforehand. Her magic tickled and sparked around him, further stimulating him and he pushed deeper into her hot, smooth passage. His whole body was tight with need and pleasure, so intense it felt more like agony.

"Leaf and star, such sweet agony," he groaned, nearly coming undone halfway in.

His cock thickened as magic swelled up from his san'shii'an. The resonance of his soulsong hummed within his flesh and his magic thrummed within her, the heat of his deep soulmagic sending pleasing sensations out along her inner passage, massaging her in turn as he pushed deeper. She eyes were closed in pleasure and he could feel it resonating into him, just as he felt the intense slick, hot gripping squeeze along his shaft. She felt like everything he'd ever wanted, leaf and star had given her to him. Their magics merged and enfolded, tangling and twisting together. Slowly, as though their soulsongs were like master musician tuning his instrument, the discordant notes lined up until their magical frequencies aligned, forming was pure, singing note. This harmony of magic caused flesh and spirit to sing as one, wringing further intensity from their pleasure.

"Creators, " she breathed in amazement.

"Well... that's one way to put it I suppose," he agreed.

Solas thrust up that last inch with a sharp jerk of his hips sheathing his sword within her fully to the hilt. The tip of his head reached the end of her passage, pressing firmly against her inner clitoris enfolded deep inside of her at the end of her flower. The result of this contact of flesh and magic was a burst of magic sharp as a crack of thunder between them. Even Solas, with as many centuries of experience as he'd had was caught breathless and tense at the wrenching pleasure that shot throughout his entire body and through his aura. Merrill's head was thrown back, eyes squeezed shut and her expressive face tight with bliss as her passage constricted around him like the coils of a serpent as she made helpless mewls of pleasure. His own breath was forced out of his lungs at the intense feeling of her slick heat gripping his cock hard all around her massaging him with flesh and magic like a thousand lightning-tipped fingers pulling and rubbing at him. It was more pleasurable than anything that had come before it. 

_:Leaf and Star! We haven't even dreamwalked together and our soulsongs are almost in perfect harmony. It will only be a matter of time before absolute confluence... Such perfection.:_

His gaze grew silver and the glow of his godlight intensified and he had to fight hard to keep his deep magic from bursting forth from his inner gates like a spring flood. She was too delicate yet, her physical shell to fragile, and her spirit too lost to the harmony of magic and spirit. He could not risk damaging her. She was too rare, too precious, and if he lived for another ten thousand years he might never see another like her again. He must restrain himself, or in his impatience risk loosing all. So. Rather than give reign to his magics, he instead fed another instinct, that possessive demanding king within him that said all within his household was _his_. The general that had went out to conquer the world.

"Look at me," he commanded her.

Slowly her eyes fluttered open, meeting his, and her forest-green eyes and widened a bit. The realization of what she'd done, what she was doing, was clearly hitting her as she gazed up at him with him seated deep inside of her, filling her flesh with his flesh, enfolding her magic in with his own. There was no mistake of the doubt and slight dismay.

So. She wasn't completely fearless. 

Her lips looked soft and vulnerable as she took him in. The stormspark of his godlight had spread out from around his san'shii'an to overtake all of his flesh, causing his whole body to glow pale, like he'd swallowed the moon. His skin glowed white-fire against her own. His vision was sheened silverbright and he knew that from her perspective his eyes would look like lighting caught in stormclouds. No doubt from her side of things, she was confronted now with the _true_ nature of the god-king bleeding through the common shell of the mortal. He could see his reflection in her eyes, the ghostly shadow of his essence haloed around him, the outline of a wolf formed suggestively in Veilfire mantled over his body. 

Solas thought that her upbringing and ingrained training might prove too strong and she would try to back out of their arrangement out of fear of what she thought him to be. Merrill, however, appeared to be made of sterner stuff than her ignorant, close-minded Dalish kin. Hesitantly, she reached up a hand from where she'd rested it on his shoulders and stroked gently at the ephemeral mirage. She started in surprise as she clearly felt something. Solas to was a little unexpected to feel a tiny shiver through his magic an ephemeral feedback from her common touch. Her expression was one more of curiosity than fear and if she could feel curiosity when he was buried shaft deep inside her then they were clearly more well suited to each other than he'd thought.

"Are you afraid of me?" he questioned her in a challenging tone.

Merrill seemed to consider his words for a long moment and then said

"Not as much as the stories say I should be," she replied. "While I'm sure there's likely some unexpected sting in the tail waiting for me in the future, I don't feel as though you've played me false in the contract. I can feel your intent to honor your word, at least, and that's reassuring."

Solas allowed a small, pleased smile at her honesty, even if it was less than flattering of him.

"Then let us proceed," he said.

Slowly he began to move within her, swollen cock pressing out against the slick, hot sides of her binding coil. The notes of the magic merged together the slide of their lovemaking like the bow upon the strings of an irhu, a stringed instrument from Arlathan. Their magics resonated with one another, building up slowly as he played gently upon her, touching the nodes and nexi of her flowpaths to heighten their combined pleasure. 

From a spark it had grown to an ember and now built to a blaze, the ebb and flow of their joining acting like the bellows of a forge, stoking their pleasure ever higher. He'd started out at a slow, shallow glide, just enjoying the slick, warm, magic-fed friction all around him, absorbing the pleasured notes of her song into his own aura. Now Solas felt the drive of a hunger long denied welling up within him. It was a hunger that grew the more it was fed. This hunger was combined with the longing ache of a dream long suppressed, the dream of a legacy of his own, a child of his issue. Underpinning these was a possessive, wolfish imperative for him to claim his mate. 

His thrusts, starting shallow and slow, now burrowed deeper inside of her, the end of each thrust punctuated by a seeking spark of magic pushing up into her belly, preparing her womb to receive his seed. Under him, Merrill's head was thrown back again as her body built with pleasure, her thighs taut around his hips, welcoming him in, her back arched up to press against his stomach. 

"So sweet, my beauty," her leaned in and murmured into her ears as he thrust down and in, shifting her position slightly to cant her hips up. 

"Let me feel you around me when you come," he invited, sending another massaging trickle of magic to hurry things along. 

Her body flamed with irridescent fire, her skin shone like pearls and lines of variegated colors glowed out along her skin. The moans and cries of ecstasy she made were almost drowned out by the intensity of her soulsong rising in pitch and intensity with every pleasured thrust. He pushed harder, drinking in her pleasure as his own grew within him, echoing and feeding on hers. He moaned encouragement, willing her to her release.

"that's it my beauty, harder, more... seal yourself to me," he commanded her in Evelon.

He thrust again, a little harder than he'd intended to as his wolfish instincts to claim were overtaking him, but she only seemed to receive him with delight.

"Give yourself over to my hands."

He pulled out, thrusting again, and punctuating it with a rush of magic.

"Join my household."

Again and again he built her pleasure, gritting his teeth hard on the rise of his own, not able to fully give over to it, but not able to deny its demand either. It was exquisite torture but he would gladly have endured a thousand such for the pure, singing intensity of their joined soulsong building within him.

"My beauty. My jewel. My perfection," he murmured nearly lost in sensation. "Let me _feel_ your release. Let me look upon you as you lose yourself to me."

At last, after what felt like an excruciating eternity, Merrill's body and aura shattered, bright as a star-burst, her whole being constricting hard around him. Once, twice, again and again and again she worked herself along him, massaging and thrusting bringing him right up to the hard, ragged edge of his own control. Solas closed his eyes but held on by a thread. He could not, _would_ not loose himself for her risked loosing her by so doing. After a small eternity of her body gripping him in heavenly tightness and her magic calling his own in pleasured entreaty, her song both triumphal pleasure and yearning desire... she loosened as the tide ebbed away, and muscle by muscle, started to relax.

"Are you pleased with the Arlathani manner of sealing our contract?" he asked with a small, smug, teasing note.

"That was... I'm not sure I have anything that could describe it," she said, her words almost slurred with pleasure.

"Did it delight you, my beauty?" he asked. "You look exquisite in the fullness of your pleasure."

"Er, um, yes? Thank-you?" she said.

"Are you delighted?" he asked again.

"I am," she said with a dreamy sort of look on her face.

"Good," he said. "I've been quite fair. And now it's my turn."

She looked at him in surprise. Solas smirked a bit and realigned their positions, pushing her thighs wider apart and tapping her inner thigh in an admonishing gesture when she tried to wrap them once again about his waist.

"Open wide for me," he commanded her. 

She was ready for him. All of him.

Solas lined up their bodies and summoned up his soulfire from deep within his lowest san'shii'an. The ember-hot crimson magic of lust and creation flowed down along his cock, swelling his member to it's limits. His shaft lengthened and its girth increased. He couldn't deny an inner preen of pride as her saw her eyes widen.

"Are you sure--?" she said in dismay.

"Quite sure."

He kissed her, tangling their tongues and magic, swamping her with a wave of feeling as his shaft arrowed into her passage. She was slick and tight all around him. Their magics rubbed ephemeral frictions, further heightening the all ready dizzyingly intense sensations to a new height. He was almost too big for her in the prime of his fullness, but the added pressure combined with the heat of their magics only spurred him onward. 

It was time to claim his mate.

The aching power of his soulforce pushed out from within him, saturating his aural field, as he thrust down and in, deep, deep, _deep_ inside of her, ramming up against her inner clitoris with his magic as though he intended to tear down her inner gate. He felt her body and magic scream around him at an intensity of pleasure so thick and sharp and hot it must have felt like she'd swallowed lightning. Inwardly he felt pleased and proud, but that was barely a consideration as he was overtaken by the need within him. 

He could feel it building, harder and higher, coiling up from within him as a serpent swimming to the surface. He pushed in again with slick, sparking slide punctuated by a deep, note of pleasure at the end when the tip of him hit her inner clitoris, and, now that he had awakened it, a sharp lightning spear of pleasure lanced down his cock striking deep inside of him. 

"So good, my beauty," he encouraged her as she writhed and moaned and sobbed with pleasure around him, her body constricting once again in response to her mounting pleasure. 

He could feel it in her, a nascent climax that would surpass everything that had ever come before it that waited within her, calling out to him, and it only increased his hunger.

He thrust in again, pulling out reluctantly only to rejoin their pleasure with a snapping roll of his hips. Magic sparked from the base of his cock to stimulate her outer clitoris. He was a man dying of thirst and every thrust was like a swallow of life-giving water. He pushed and pushed and pushed again, drinking deep and needing more.

"So good... almost there," he gritted through clenched teeth.

It was excruciating these last moments. It was necessary to hold back the vast bulk of his power until her body had been trained to withstand it. Already she cried out in pleasure that it was almost too much. He didn't want to hurt her, he had to be careful, but oh, how he _hungered_. He ached to release himself truly within her, but her mortal body was too delicate yet. Soon. Not now, soon. 

Solas fucked harder, friction growing hotter, quicker, tighter, then...

Lightning burst within him. A stormwind of sensation so intense that he lost himself to it. Pure agonizing pleasure swept him in a wave, subsuming everything to it. Logic, sense, duty, even his very _self_ were swept aside in the intensity of that all-consuming moment. There was nothing more than this. This was all he was, here with her, their bodies joined in this one moment of perfect beauty. 

It felt like it would echo on for eternity, but all too briefly it slipped away and he was pulled down into the pleasure of excoriated flesh again as he felt his seed burst from within him, saturating her body with moist, hot magic borne along by his release. 

"Solas! Ohhhh, help! I can't, it's too..." she gasped and panted as she was flooded by him. 

His moonseed spread deep inside of her, her belly lightning up like a summer storm as he held himself deep inside of her. Solas punctuated his claiming with a few short, sharp thrusts, as the last few dribs of moonseed flowed out from the tip of his shaft, hitting against her inner clitoris on its way up into her belly and causing her magic to react once again.

"It's too much," she said, clinging to him and trembling.

"Shhhh," he soothed her as she orgasmed helplessly again, her body shivering and shuddering, muscles tight under his own. 

"Shh, my beauty," he soothed feeling a pang of guilt for having clearly overstimulated her. 

It was possible to do a thing _too_ thoroughly after all.

"There now, just rest. You're alright," he said gently, making soothing strokes over her skin to get her senses and magic to calm down a bit.

Solas looked down at his prize, his mate. She truly was _his_ beauty now. In his silver gaze she was alive with fire and power, sex and magic, glowing with intense colors and beauty more alive than a thousand summer sunsets. He watched with pleasure as the light of his moonseed glowed within her belly like lightning caught in a cloud, heralding that her fertile field would some day be planted by his seed, and she had promised its bounty to him.

Merrill lay back against the pillows breathing heavy, every muscle limp and exhausted-looking, to the point that she didn't even appear to be able to open her eyes. Solas was also pleased by this. He did still have his pride as a man after all, and felt good to see that he had brought his mate so much pleasure that she could but lay beneath him and bask, tiredly in the lingering waves of pleasure he had brought her to. His manhood still waited in nascent power within her, flush with magic and pleasure, and far from finished with his work.

His mortal shell might have been vastly weakened by his time in uthenera, but he was not so delicate that a single joining would exhaust him. In fact...

Solas, not having removed himself from her, felt his magic beginning to swell once more. In Arlathan, while their biologies of their bodies had been slow to waken, the efficacy of their magic had given them all enormous _staying power_. In modern days, it seemed that the female elflings were the only ones capable of experiencing multiple orgasms, but that had not been true in _his_ world, and already his body was once again growing _interested_.

"My beauty," he murmured softly, kissing her along her collarbone under her ear. 

One hand massaged a breast in that way he knew already she very much liked, while the other went lower to circle her outer clitoris with pressure and magic. He worked at her for a moment, his movements suggestive and entreating as his partly softened manhood began to harden once again, swelled by his inner magic.

Merrill's eyes opened wide and she looked at him with aghast incredulity.

"Surely not!" she said in disbelief.

He was sure his smirk was all smug maleness, a holdover from his younger days as General Fen'Harel, Knight-Commander of Mythal's forces; hot-blooded, cocky, and always spoiling for a fight (among other things, in those days). 

In reply he pushed deeper inside of her with a roll of his hips, capturing her lips with his own, and letting out a satisfied sigh into her mouth at the pleasured feeling of her inner passage and magic surrounding him once more. Already it felt like coming home. He might never see Arlathan again, but he was now suddenly prepared to say that this new world might offer equally pleasant delights within it. Two thrusts more served to harden him properly and he felt their magic gather in again, the friction between them heating it up like two hands rubbed together.

"Are you satisfied with your bargain, my beauty?" he asked her on the tip of a third thrust where he pressed against her inner clitoris and felt her magic blow out from within her, flooding her again with sensations she'd likely never known before now.

Merrills answer was another moan of pleasure and his inner wolf puffed up with pride at having accomplished the goal of bringing her along to climax again when she'd clearly felt her duty done for the evening. Best to disabuse her of _that_ notion early. 

"Surely you had not thought us finished with?" he asked a bit teasingly, sliding into her a little more slowly so he could delight in the friction of them, like slipping into a good hot bath.

"Solas," she breathed, a soft note of urgency in her voice.

"Yes, my beauty?" he asked her casually, sliding slowly back out.

"I'll go mad of this," she protested, even as she arched her hips back up to his, thighs squeezing him tight as she wrapped her legs back around his waist.

"Welcome to madness, my beauty," he whispered hot in her ear, punctuating 'madness' with another rolling thrust of his hips hitting deep inside her again.

The pleasure of their magics joining and building off one another, the notes of their song echoing and resonating was more intoxicating than wine or drug. His body chased down every sensation with shivering, moaning thrusts. He was more emphatic this time as he knew what to expect now and he hungered for an ever greater taste. His soulforce nearly crushed them both when he let it slip for but an instant at the height of his climax, his world consumed by fire and pleasure and need for her. 

Merrills eyes were blown wide, staring into some distance he could not see. As the lightning-heat sharp edge of the crest began to ebb, Solas ran his hands and magic over her in concern, checking her for damage. She was so delicate yet, he could not afford to be incautious. 

"My beauty?" he asked urgently, shaking her gently. "Are you alright?"

Merrill blinked, to his relief and looked at him, surprised.

"What...? Will it be like that _every_ time?"

"Did I hurt you?" he asked urgently.

His power was vastly below what it had once been in his heyday, but even now it was still far beyond what an elfling of modern times could summon to their call, as much as they had to fight the Veil for every little trickle of power.

"I... I don't... know?" she asked in confusion.

Something flickered deep within her eyes, like a tiny fish surfacing the waters and then it was gone so quickly he thought he might have imagined it. He hadn't thought she might awaken so soon, but if she truly was His Own, then it was to be expected that she would be extraordinary (when compared to the dull, mud-doll rest of her kind). 

"I suppose it were best we pace ourselves," he admitted, by way of apology. 

"Is that... normal, or just _you_?" she asked.

"A little of both," he replied, understanding that she was referring both to the intense gravity-pressure of his soulforce and the fact that he, unlike the males of modern days, could enjoy more than one round of orgasms before he was finished for the eve.

"Will we go again?" she asked sleepily, eyes fluttering shut and exhausted body beginning to relax back into the bed again.

"Presently," he promised her. "For the purpose of the evening, we can consider our contract fully sealed."

With a small feeling of regret at the neccesity to depart, he gently withdrew from her body and tucked some of the coverings around her after a final, possessive caress over her stomach. He had a number of matters to arrange in order to adequately fulfil his end of thier arrangement, not least among them would be setting up the guest tower in his own Inner Palace there in the Vir Darathal to receive his scholarly guest, as well as to arrange a few appropriate Spirirts to attend to her while she was there, and not to mention arrange her wardrobe as he'd promised to do.

"Rest here my beauty," he said softly as her located his totem necklace in the folds of the covers.

"Are you leaving?" she asked sleepily, a note of anxiety penetrating her sleepy tone.

"I must see to a few of the other details of our arrangement before I go back to the other side and my duties there," he said as he leaned in and tucked a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. "I will visit you again soon to lead you to your new living quarters."

Solas hesitated, still feeling a little guilty for his earlier slip in control.

"You are certain that you are not harmed or discomfited?"

"Mmmm-mm," she negated on the edge of her dreams, slipping quickly into sleep.

Solas was momentarily tempted to follow her into the Fade and see if there might be a fuller joining between them, a joining of Fade and flesh, the sort that led (Leaf and Star willing) to the Confluence that would form a child within her... but he resisted the temptation. _That_ was a ritual for much later, after her magic and body had had more time to adjust. One did not rush headlong into these things, especially with his mortal mate still so delicate. He must be patient.

_:It will take time. But as the fruit ripens on the vine, so shall my mate be prepared to bear her own fruit. I must but be patient, and all will come in the fullness of time.:_

Every joining would prepare her a little more, attuning her magic to his. Every flood of his moonseed within her would saturate her with magic and prepare her womb a little more, preparing it to receive and carry his child within her. She wasn't ready yet, and it would take time and patience... but she would be, and now their contract had claimed her, buying him the time he needed to ready her for his intended fate.

"Sleep well, my beauty," he murmured to her, tucking the blankets around her and pulling their body-heir contract out from its hidden alcove under the mattress. "Rest until I come to you again."

Solas left the chamber to arrange her new living space where he would come to her for his contractual visits. His body felt intensely alive with magic and sex for the first time in centuries and the world seemed to widen with possibilities. 

_:What is it the Dalish say of me? "let the Dread Wolf take you?":_ he mused in amusement. _:So I shall.:_

As he paced along the corridors of the Great Library to make his arrangements, his shadow stretched out long behind him, deep and ink-black with its own presence, formed into the shape of a wolf.


End file.
